\ 




DISCOURSES 

ON THE 

CHRISTIAN REVELATION 

VIEWED IN CONNEXION WITH THE 

MODERN ASTRONOMY 

WITH OTHERS OF A KINDRED CHARACTER. 

CT THF LA.TK 

THOMAS CHALMERS, D.D. LLD. 



EDINBURGH: THOMAS CONSTABLE AND CO. 
LONDON : HAMILTON, ADAMS, AND CO. 

MDCCCLII. 



J->LZS3 

OS" 

is-sz 



I DIICEURGH : T. CONSTABLE. PU INTER TO HER tfAJ18T1 



3 

PREFACE. 

The astronomical objection against the truth of the 
Gospel, does not occupy a very prominent place in 
any of our Treatises of Infidelity. It is often, hoM 
ever, met with in conversation — and \vc have known 
it to be the cause of serious perplexity and alarm in 
minds anxious for the solid establishment of their 
religious faith. 

There is an imposing splendour in the science of 
Astronomy; and ii if not to be wondered at, if the 
light it throws, or appears to throw, oyer other tracks 
of speculation than those which are properly its own. 
should at times dazzle and mislead an inquirer. Oh 
this account, we think it were a service to what we 
deem a true and a righteous cause, could we succeed 
in dissipating this illusion, and in stripping I nlidelitv 

of those pretensions to enlargement, and to a certain 
air of philosophical greatness, by which it lias often 
become so destructively alluring to the young, and 
the ardent, and the ambitious. 

In my first Discourse, I have attempted a sketch 
of the Modern Astronomy — nor have 1 wished in 



vi 



PREFACE. 



throw any disguise over that comparative littleness 
which belongs to our planet, and which gives to the 
argument of Freethinkers all its plausibility. 

This argument involves in it an assertion and an 
inference. The assertion is, that Christianity is a 
religion which professes to be designed for the single 
benefit of our world ; and the inference is, that God 
cannot be the author of this religion, for He would 
not lavish on so insignificant a field, such peculiar 
and such distinguishing attentions, as are ascribed 
to Him in the Old and New Testaments. 

Christianity makes no such profession. That it 
is designed for the single benefit of our world is al- 
together a presumption of the Infidel himself — and 
feeling that this is not the only example of temerity 
which can be charged on the enemies of our faith, I 
have allotted my second Discourse to the attempt of 
demonstrating the utter repugnance of such a spirit 
with the cautious and enlightened philosophy of mo- 
dern times. 

In the course of this Sermon I have offered a tri- 
bute of acknowledgment to the theology of Sir Isaac 
Newton ; and in such terms, as if not farther ex- 
plained, may be liable to misconstruction. The grand 
circumstance of applause in the character of this 
great man, is, that unseduced by all the magnificence 
of his own discoveries, he had a solidity of mind 
which could resist their fascination, and keep him in 
steady attachment to that Book, whose general evi- 



PREFACE. 



Vll 



dences stamped upon it the impress of a real com- 
munication from Heaven. This was the sole attri- 
bute of his theology which I had in my eye when I 
presumed to eulogize it. I do not think that, amid 
the distraction and the engrossment of his other 
pursuits, he has at all times succeeded in his inter- 
pretation of the Book ; else he would never, in my 
apprehension, have abetted the leading doctrine of 
a sect or a system, which has now nearly dwindled 
away from public observation. 

In my third Discourse I am silent as to the asser- 
tion, and attempt to combat the inference that is 
founded on it. I insist that upon all the analogies 
of nature and of providence, we can lay no limit on 
the condescension of God, or on the multiplicity of 
His regards even to the very humblest departments 
of creation ; and that it is not for us, who see the 
evidences of divine wisdom and care spread in such 
exhaustless profusion around us, to say, that the 
Deity would not lavish all the wealth of His wondrous 
attributes on the salvation even of our solitary species. 

At this point of the argument, I trust that the 
intelligent reader may be enabled to perceive, in the 
adversaries of the Gospel, a twofold dereliction from 
the maxims of the Baconian philosophy : that, in 
the first instance, the assertion which forms the 
groundwork of their argument is gratuitously fetch- 
ed out of an unknown region, where they are utterly 
abandoned by the light of experience ; and that, in 



VIII 



PREFACE. 



the second instance, the inference they urge from it 
is in the face of manifold and undeniable truths, all 
lying within the safe and accessible field of human 
observation. 

In my subsequent Discourses, I proceed to the 
informations of the Record. The Infidel objection 
drawn from Astronomy may be considered as by this 
time disposed of ; and if we have succeeded in clear- 
ing it away, so as to deliver the Christian testimony 
from all discredit upon this ground, then may we 
submit, on the strength of other evidences, to be 
guided by its information. We shall thus learn that 
Christianity has a far more extensive bearing on the 
other orders of creation, than the Infidel is disposed 
to allow ; and whether he will own the authority of 
this information or not, he will at least be forced to 
admit, that the subject-matter of the Bible itself is 
not chargeable with that objection which he has at- 
tempted to fasten upon it. 

Thus, had my only object been the refutation of 
the Infidel argument, I might have spared the last 
Discourses of the Series altogether. But the tracks 
of Scriptural information to which they directed me, 
I considered as worthy of prosecution on their own 
account ; and I do think that much may be gather- 
ed from these less observed portions of the field of 
revelation, to cheer, and to elevate, and to guide the 
believer. 

I tut in the management of such a discussion as this, 



PREFACE. 



ix 



though for a great degree of this effect it would re- 
quire to be conducted in a far higher style than I 
am able to sustain, the taste of the human mind may 
be regaled, and its understanding put into a state 
of the most agreeable exercise. Now, this is quite 
distinct from the conscience being made to feel the 
force of a personal application ; nor could I either 
bring this argument to its close in the pulpit, or offer 
it to the general notice of the world, without advert- 
ing, in the last Discourse, to a delusion which I 
fear is carrying forward thousands and tens of thou- 
sands to an undone eternity. 

I have closed the Series with an Appendix of 
Scriptural Authorities. I found that I could not 
easily interweave them in the texture of the Work, 
and have, therefore, thought fit to present them in a 
separate form. I look for a twofold benefit from this 
exhibition — first, to those more general readers who 
are ignorant of the Scriptures, and of the richness 
and variety which abound in them — and, secondly, 
to those narrow and intolerant professors, who take 
an alarm at the very sound and semblance of phi- 
losophy, and feel as if there was an utterly irre- 
concilable antipathy between its lessons on the one 
hand, and the soundness and piety of the Bible on 
the other. It were well, I conceive, for our cause 
that the latter could become a V ttle more indulgent 
on this subject ; that they gave up a portion of those 
ancient and hereditary prepossessions which go so 



X 



PREFACE. 



far to cramp and to enthral them ; that they would 
suffer theology to take that wide range of argument 
and of illustration which belongs to her ; and that, 
less sensitively jealous of any desecration being- 
brought upon the Sabbath or the pulpit, they would 
suffer her freely to announce all those truths, which 
either serve to protect Christianity from the contempt 
of science, or to protect the teachers of Christianity 
from those invasions which are practised both on the 
sacredness of the office, and on the solitude of its 
devotional and intellectual labours. 

To these Astronomical Discourses, I have added 
some others, illustrative of the connexion between 
Theology and General Science. The argument on 
which we have ventured in one of these Discourses, 
and by which we attempt to reconcile the efficacy 
of prayer with the constancy of visible nature, was 
called forth in opposition to the contemptuous treat- 
ment which certain members of the British Senate 
thought fit to bestow on the proposal for a National 
Fast, at a time when the fearful epidemic of cholera 
had broken forth in various parts of the country. 



CONTENTS. 



DISCOURSE I. 

A SKETCH OF THE MODERN ASTRONOMY. 

When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the 
moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained ; what is 
man, that thou art mindful of him ? and the son of man, 
that thou visitest him ?" — Psalm viii. 3, 4, . . .15 

DISCOURSE II. 

THE MODESTY OF TRUE SCIENCE. 

And if any man think that he knoweth any thing, he knoweth 
nothing yet as he ought to know." — 1 Cor. viii. 2, .42 

DISCOURSE III. 

ON THE EXTENT OF THE DIVINE CONDESCENSION. 

Who is like unto the Lord our God, who dwelleth on high, 
who humbleth himself to behold the things that are in 
heaven, and in the earth !" — Psalm cxiii. 5, 6, . .68 

DISCOURSE IV. 

ON THE KNOWLEDGE OF MAN'S MORAL HISTORY IN THE 
DISTANT PLACES OF CREATION. 

Which things the angels desire to look into." — 1 Pet. i. 12, . 90 
DISCOURSE V. 

ON THE SYMPATHY THAT IS FELT FOR MAN IN THE DISTANT 
PLACES OF CREATION. 

I say unto you, That likewise joy shall be in heaven over one 
sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just 
persons, which need no repentance." — Luke xv. 7, . .113 



xii 



CONTENTS. 



DISCOURSE YX. 

ON THE CONTEST FOR AN ASCENDENCY OVER MAN AMONGST THE 
HIGHER ORDERS OF INTELLIGENCE. 

" And having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a show 
of them openly, triumphing over them in it."— Colossia:;s 
ii. 15, . . . . . ... . . .132 

DISCOURSE vn. 

ON THE SLENDER INFLUENCE OF MERE TASTE AND SENSIBILITY 
IN MATTERS OF RELIGION. 

" And. lo ! thou art unto them as a very lovely song of one that 
hath a pleasant voice, and can play well on an instrument : 
for they hear thy words, but they do them not." — Ezekiel 
xxxiii. 32, .150 

Appendix, . . . 179 



DISCOURSES OF A KINDRED CHARACTER WITH THE PRECEDING . 
DISCOURSE I. 

THE CONSTANCY OF GOD IN HIS WORKS AN ARGUMENT FOR THE 
FAITHFULNESS OF GOD IN HIS WORD. 

u For ever. Lord, thy word is settled in heaven. Thy faith- 
fulness is unto all generations : thou hast established the 
earth, and it abideth. They continue this day according to 
thine ordinances : for all are thy servants." — Psalm cxix. 
89, 90, 91, 201 

DISCOURSE II. 

ON THE CONSISTENCY BETWEEN THE EFFICACY OF PRAY BB 
AND THE UNIFORMITY OF NATURE. 

M Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days 
scoffers, walking after their own lusts, and saying. Where 
is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell 
asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning 
Of the creation." — 2 Peter iii. 3, 4, 232 



CONTENTS. Xlll 
DISCOURSE III. 

THE TRANSITORY NATURE OF VISIBLE THINGS, 

; The things which are seen are temporal." — 2 Cor. iv. 18, . 260 
DISCOURSE IV. 

ON THE NEW HEAVENS AND THE NEW EARTH. 

' Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new 
heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness." 



—2 Peter iii. 13, 276 

DISCOURSE V. 

THE NATURE OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 

1 For the kingdom of God is not in word, bat in power." — 
1 Cor. iv. 20, 295 

DISCOURSE VI. 

HEAVEN A CHARACTER AND NOT A LOCALITY. 

He that is unjust, let him be unjust still : and he which is 
filthy, let him be filthy still : and he that is righteous, let 
him be righteous still : and he that is holy, let him be holy 
still."— Rev. xxii. 11, 314 



DISCOURSE VII. 

ON THE REASONABLENESS OF FAITH. 

But before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up 
unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed." — 
Galatians iii. 23, 333 



DISCOURSE I. 

A SKETCH OF THE MODERN ASTRONOMY. 



44 When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon 
and the stars, which thou hast ordained ; what is man, that thou 
art mindful of him ? and the son of man, that thou visitest him ?" — 
Psalm viii. 3, 4. 

In the reasonings of the Apostle Paul, we cannot 
fail to observe, how studiously he accommodates his 
arguments to the pursuits or principles or prejudices 
of the people whom he was addressing. He often 
made a favourite opinion of their own the starting 
point of his explanation ; and educing a dexterous 
but irresistible train of argument from some prin- 
ciple upon which each of the parties had a common 
understanding, it was his practice to force them out 
of all their opposition by a weapon of their own 
choosing, — nor did he scruple to avail himself of a 
Jewish peculiarity, or a heathen superstition, or a 
quotation from Greek poetry, by which he might 
gain the attention of those whom he laboured to 
convince, and by the skilful application of which 
he might " shut them up unto the faith." 

Now, when Paul was thus addressing one class of 
an assembly or congregation, another class might, 
for the time, have been shut out of all direct benefit 



16 



SKETCH OF MODERN ASTRONOMY. 



and application from his arguments. When lie wrote 
an Epistle to a mixed assembly of Christianized 
Jews and Gentiles, he had often to direct such a 
process of argument to the former, as the latter 
would neither require nor comprehend. Now, what 
should have been the conduct of the Gentiles at the 
reading of that part of the Epistle which bore almost 
an exclusive reference to the Jews ? Should it be 
impatience at the hearing of something for which 
they had no relish or understanding ? Should it be 
a fretful disappointment because every thing that 
was said w^as not said for their edification ? Should 
it be angry discontent with the Apostle, because, 
leaving them in the dark, he had brought forward 
nothing for them through the whole extent of so 
many successive chapters ? Some of them may have 
felt in this way ; but surely it would have been 
vastly more Christian to have sat with meek and 
unfeigned patience, and to have rejoiced that the 
great Apostle had undertaken the management of 
those obstinate prejudices, which kept back so many 
human beings from the participation of the Gospel. 
And should Paul have had reason to rejoice, that, 
by the success of his arguments, he had reconciled 
one or any number of Jews to Christianity, then it 
was the part of these Gentiles, though receiving no 
direct or personal benefit from the arguments, to 
have blessed God, and rejoiced along with him. 

Conceive that Paul were at this moment alive, 
and zealously engaged in the work of pressing the 
Christian religion on the acceptance of the various 
classes of society. Should he not still have acted 
on the principle of being all things to all men ? 



SKETCH OF MODERN ASTRONOMY. 



17 



Should he not have accommodated his discussion to 
the prevailing taste and literature and philosophy 
of the times ? Should he not have closed with the 
people, whom he was addressing, on some favourite 
principle of their own ; and, in the prosecution of 
this principle, might he not have got completely be- 
yond the comprehension of a numerous class of 
zealous, humble, and devoted Christians ? Now, 
the question is not, how these would conduct them- 
selves in such circumstances ? — but, how should they 
do it ? Would it be right in them to sit with 
impatience, because the argument of the Apostle 
contained in it nothing in the way of comfort or 
edification to themselves ? Should not the bene- 
volence of the Gospel give a different direction to 
their feelings? And, instead of that narrow, ex- 
clusive, and monopolizing spirit, which I fear is 
too characteristic of the more declared professors of 
the truth as it is in Jesus, ought they not to be 
patient, and to rejoice, when to philosophers, and to 
men of literary accomplishment, and to those who 
have the direction of the public taste among the 
upper walks of society, such arguments are addressed 
as may bring home to their acceptance also, " the 
words of this life t* It is under the impulse of these 
considerations that I have, with some hesitation, 
prevailed upon myself to attempt an argument, 
which I think fitted to soften and subdue those pre- 
judices which lie at the bottom of what may be called 
the infidelity of natural science ; if possible to bring 
over to the humility of the Gospel those who ex- 
patiate with delight on the wonders and the sublimi- 
ties of creation, and to convince them that a loftier 

B 



18 



SKETCH OF MODERN ASTRONOMY". 



I 



wisdom still than that even of their high and hon- 
ourable acquirements, is the wisdom of him who is 
resolved to know nothing but Jesus Christ and him 
crucified. 

It is truly a most Christian exercise to extract 
a sentiment of piety from the works and the appear- 
ances of nature. It has the authority of the Sacred 
Writers upon its side, and even our Saviour himself 
gives it the w r eight and the solemnity of his ex- 
ample. " Behold the lilies of the field ; they toil 
not, neither do they spin, yet your heavenly Father 
care tli for them.'" He expatiates on the beauty of 
a single flower, and draws from it the delightful 
argument of confidence in Grod. He gives us to see 
that taste may be combined with piety, and that the 
same heart may be occupied with all that is serious 
in the contemplations of religion, and be at the same 
time alive to the charms and the loveliness of 
nature. 

The Psalmist takes a still loftier flight. He leaves 
the world, and lifts his imagination to that mighty 
expanse which spreads above it and around it. He 
wings his way through space, and wanders in thought 
over its immeasurable regions. Instead of a dark 
and unpeopled solitude, he sees it crowded with 
splendour, and filled with the energy of the Divine 
presence. Creation rises in its immensity before 
him ; and the world, with all which it inherits, 
shrinks into littleness at a contemplation so vast and 
so overpowering. He wonders that he is not over- 
looked amid the grandeur and the variety which are 
on every side of him ; and passing upward from the 
majesty of nature to the majesty of nature's Archi- 



SKETCH OF MODERN ASTRONOMY. 



19 



tect, he exclaims, "What is man that thou art 
mindful of him ; or the son of man that thou 
shouldest deign to visit him it 

It is not for us to say, whether inspiration revealed 
to the Psalmist the wonders of the modern astronomy. 
But even though the mind be a perfect stranger to 
the science of these enlightened times, the heavens 
present a great and an elevating spectacle — an im- 
mense concave reposing upon the circular boundary 
of the world, and the innumerable lights which are 
suspended from on high, moving with solemn regu- 
larity along its surface. It seems to have been at 
night that the piety of the Psalmist was awakened 
by this contemplation, when the moon and the stars 
were visible, and not when the sun had risen in his 
strength, and thrown a splendour around him, which 
bore down and eclipsed all the lesser glories of the 
firmament. And there is much in the scenery of a 
nocturnal sky, to lift the soul to pious contemplation. 
That moon, and these stars, what are they ? They 
are detached from the world, and they lift us above 
it. We feel withdrawn from the earth, and rise in 
lofty abstraction from this little theatre of human 
passions and human anxieties. The mind abandons 
itself to reverie, and is transferred in the ecstasy of 
its thoughts to distant and unexplored regions. It 
sees nature in the simplicity of her great elements, 
and it sees the God of nature invested with the hissk 
attributes of wisdom and majesty. 

But what can these lights be ? The curiosity of 
the human mind is insatiable ; and the mechanism 
of these wonderful heavens has, in all ages, been its 
subject and its employment It has been reserved 



20 



SKF/TCII OF MODERN ASTKONOMY. 



for these latter times to resolve this great and in- 
teresting question. The sublimest powers of philo- 
sophy havebeen called to the exercise, and astronomy 
may now be looked upon as the most certain and 
best established of the sciences. 

We all know that every visible object appears less 
in magnitude as it recedes from the eye. The lofty 
vessel, as it retires from the coast, shrinks into little- 
ness, and at last appears in the form of a small speck 
on the verge of the horizon. The eagle, with its ex- 
panded wings, is a noble object ; but when it takes 
its flight into the upper regions of the air, it becomes 
less to the eye, and is seen like a dark spot upon 
the vault of heaven. The same is true of all magni- 
tude. The heavenly bodies appear small to the eye 
of an inhabitant of this earth, only from the immen- 
sity of their distance. When we talk of hundreds 
of millions of miles, it is not to be listened to as in- 
credible. For remember that we are talking of those 
bodies which are scattered over the immensity of 
space, and that space knows no termination. The 
conception is great and difficult, but the truth is 
unquestionable. By a process of measurement which 
it is unnecessary at present to explain, we have as- 
certained first the distance, and then the magnitude 
of some of those bodies which roll in the firmament ; 
that the sun which presents itself to the eye under 
so diminutive a form, is really a globe, exceeding, by 
many thousands of times, the dimensions of the 
earth which we inhabit ; that the moon itself has the 
magnitude of a world ; and that even a few of those 
stars which appear like so many lucid points to the 
unassisted eye of the observer, expand into large 



SKETCH OF MODERN ASTRONOMY. 21 

circles upon the application of the telescope, and are 
some of them much larger than the ball which we 
tread upon, and to which we proudly apply the de- 
nomination of the universe. 

Now, what is the fair and obvious presumption ? 
The world in which we live is a round ball of a 
determined magnitude, and occupies its own place 
in the firmament. But when we explore the un- 
limited tracts of that space which is everywhere 
around us, we meet with other balls of equal or 
superior magnitude, and from which our earth would 
either be invisible, or appear as small as any of 
those twinkling stars which are seen on the canopy 
of heaven. Why then suppose that this little spot, 
little at least in the immensity which surrounds it, 
should be the exclusive abode of life and of intelli- 
gence ? What reason to think that those mightier 
globes which roll in other parts of creation, and 
which w r e have discovered to be worlds in magnitude, 
are not also worlds in use and in dignity? Why 
should we think that the great Architect of nature, 
supreme in wisdom as He is in power, would call 
these stately mansions into existence and leave them 
unoccupied? When we cast our eye over the broad 
sea, and look at the country on the other side, we 
see nothing but the blue land stretching obscurely 
over the distant horizon. We are too far away to 
perceive the richness of its scenery, or to hear the 
sound of its population. Why not extend this prin- 
ciple to the still more distant parts of the universe? 
What though, from this remote point of observation, 
we can see nothing but the naked roundness of yon 
planetary orbs ? Are we therefore to say, that they 



SKETCH OF MODERN" ASTRONOMY. 



are so many vast and unpeopled solitudes; that de- 
solation reigns in every part of the universe but 
ours ; that the whole energy of the divine attributes 
is expended on one insignificant corner of these 
mighty works ; and that to this earth alone belongs 
the bloom of vegetation, or the blessedness of life, 
or the dignity of rational and immortal existence ? 

But this is not all. We have something more 
than the mere magnitude of the planets to allege in 
favour of the idea that they are inhabited. We know 
that this earth turns round upon itself ; and we ob- 
serve that all those celestial bodies, which are acces- 
sible to such an observation, have the same move- 
ment. We know that the earth performs a yearly 
revolution round the sun ; and we can detect, in all 
the planets which compose our system, a revolution 
of the same kind, and under the same circumstances. 
They have the same succession of day and night. 
They have the same agreeable vicissitude of the 
seasons. To them light and darkness succeed each 
other ; and the gaiety of summer is followed by the 
dreariness of winter. To each of them the heavens 
present as varied and magnificent a spectacle ; and 
this earth, the encompassing of which would require 
the labour of years from one of its puny inhabitants, 
is but one of the lesser lights which sparkle in their 
firmament. To them, as well as to us, lias God 
divided the light from the darkness, and he lias 
called the light day, and the darkness he has called 
night, lie has said, let there be lights in the fir- 
mament of their heaven, to divide the day from 
the night ; and let them be for signs, and for sea- 
sons, and for days, and for years; and let them be for 



SKETCH OF MODERN ASTRONOMY. 



23 



lights in the firmament of heaven, to give light up- 
on their earth ; and it was so. And God has also 
made to them great lights. To all of them he has 
given the sun to rule the day ; and to many of them 
has he given moons to rule the night. To them he 
has made the stars also. And God has set them in 
the firmament of heaven, to give light upon their 
earth ; and to rule over the day, and over the night, 
and to divide the light from the darkness ; and God 
has seen that it was good. 

In all these greater arrangements of divine wis- 
dom, we can see that God has done the same things 
for the accommodation of the planets that he has 
done for the earth which we inhabit. And shall 
we say that the resemblance stops here, because 
we are not in a situation to observe it ? Shall we 
say that this scene of magnificence has been called 
into being merely for the amusement of a few astro- 
nomers ? Shall we measure the counsels of heaven 
by the narrow impotence of the human faculties ? 
or conceive, that silence and solitude reign through- 
out the mighty empire of nature ; that the greater 
part of creation is an empty parade ; and that not 
a worshipper of the Divinity is to be found through 
the wide extent of yon vast and immeasurable re- 

•il&flMr? ohhma ifohfw airfoil jqss&I erfl to ono jnd ?\ 
It lends a delightful confirmation to the argument, 
when, from the growing perfection of our instru- 
ments, we can discover a new point of resemblance 
between our earth and the other bodies of the 
planetary system. It is now ascertained, not merely 
that all of them have their day and night, and that 
all of them have their vicissitudes of seasons, and 



24: SKETCH OF MODERN ASTRONOMY. 

that some of them have their moons to rule their 
night and alleviate the darkness of it ; — we can see 
of one, that its surface rises into inequalities, that 
it swells into mountains and stretches into valleys ; 
of another, that it is surrounded by an atmosphere 
which may support the respiration of animals ; of 
a third, that clouds are formed and suspended over 
it, which may minister to it all the bloom and luxu- 
riance of vegetation ; and of a fourth, that a white 
colour spreads over its northern regions as its win- 
ter advances, and that on the approach of summer 
this whiteness is dissipated — giving room to sup- 
pose, that the element of water abounds in it, that 
it rises by evaporation into its atmosphere, that it 
freezes upon the application of cold, that it is precipi- 
tated in the form of snow, that it covers the ground 
with a fleecy mantle, which melts away from the 
heat of a more vertical sun ; and that other worlds 
bear a resemblance to our own, in the same yearly 
round of beneficent and interesting changes. 

Who shall assign a limit to the discoveries of 
future ages ? Who can prescribe to science her 
boundaries, or restrain the active and insatiable 
curiosity of man within the circle of his present ac- 
quirements ? We may guess with plausibility what 
we cannot anticipate with confidence. The day 
may yet be coming, when our instruments of obser- 
vation shall be inconceivably more powerful. They 
may ascertain still more decisive points of resem- 
blance. They may resolve the same question by 
the evidence of sense, which is now so abundantly 
convincing by the evidence of analogy. They may 
lay open to us the unquestionable vestiges of art, 



SKETCH OF MODERN ASTRONOMY. 25 

and industry, and intelligence. We may see sum- 
mer throwing its green mantle over these mighty 
tracts, and we may see them left naked and colour- 
less after the flush of vegetation has disappeared. 
In the progress of years or of centuries, we may 
trace the hand of cultivation spreading a* new aspect 
over some portion of a planetary surface. Perhaps 
some large city, the metropolis of a mighty empire, 
may expand into a visible spot by the powers of 
some future telescope. Perhaps the glass of some 
observer, in a distant age, may enable him to con- 
struct the map of another world, and to lay dow T n 
the surface of it in all its minute and topical varie- 
ties. But there is no end of conjecture ; and to 
the men of other times we leave the full assurance 
of what we can assert with the highest probability, 
that yon planetary orbs are so many worlds, that 
they teem with life, and that the mighty Being who 
presides in high authority over this scene of gran- 
deur and astonishment, has there planted the wor- 
shippers of His glory. 

Did the discoveries of science stop here, we have 
enough to justify the exclamation of the Psalmist, 
" What is man that thou art mindful of him ; or the 
son of man that thou shouldest deign to visit him & 
They w r iden the empire of creation far beyond the 
limits which were formerly assigned to it. They 
give us to see that yon sun, throned in the centre 
of his planetary system, gives light, and warmth, and 
the vicissitude of seasons, to an extent of surface 
several hundreds of times greater than that of the 
earth which we inhabit. They lay open to us a num- 
berof worlds, rolling in their respective circles around 



26 



SKETCH OF MODERN ASTRONOMY. 



this vast luminary — and prove, that the ball which 
we tread upon, with all its mighty burden of oceans 
and continents, instead of being distinguished from 
the others, is among the least of them ; and, from 
some of the more distant planets, would not occupy 
a visible point in the concave of their firmament. 
They let us know, that though this mighty earth, 
with all its myriads of people, were to sink into anni- 
hilation, there are some worlds where an event so 
awful to us would be unnoticed and unknown, and 
others where it would be nothing more than the dis- 
appearance of a little star which had ceased from its 
twinkling. We should feel a sentiment of modesty 
at this just but humiliating representation. We 
should learn not to look on our earth as the universe 
of God, but one paltry and insignificant portion of it ; 
that it is only one of the many mansions which the 
Supreme Being has created for the accommodation 
of His worshippers, and only one of the many worlds 
rolling in that flood of light which the sun pours 
around him to the outer limits of the planetary 
system. 

But is there nothing beyond these limits ? The 
planetary system has its boundary, but space has 
none ? and if we wing our fancy there, do we only 
travel through dark and unoccupied regions ? There 
are only five, or at most six, of the planetary orbs 
visible to the naked eye. What, then, is that mul- 
titude of other lights which sparkle in our firmament, 
and fill the whole concave of heaven with innumer- 
able splendours ? The planets are all attached to 
the sun ; and, in circling around him, they do horn- 
tetgfl to that influence which binds them to perpetual 



SKETCH OF MODEKN ASTRONOMY. 



27 



attendance on this great luminary. But the other 
stars do not own his dominion. They do not circle 
around him. To all common observation, they re- 
main immovable ; and each, like the independent 
sovereign of his own territory, appears to occupy the 
same inflexible position in the regions of immensity. 
What can we make of them ? Shall we take our 
adventurous flight to explore these dark and un- 
travelled dominions ? What mean these innumerable 
fires lighted up in distant parts of the universe ? 
Are they only made to shed a feeble glimmering 
over this little spot in the kingdom of nature ? or 
do they serve a purpose worthier of themselves, to 
light up other worlds, and give animation to other 
systems ? 

The first thing which strikes a scientific observer 
of the fixed stars, is their immeasurable distance. 
If the whole planetary system were lighted up into 
a globe of fire, it would exceed, by many millions of 
times, the magnitude of this world, and yet only 
appear a small lucid point from the nearest of them. 
If a body were projected from the sun with the ve- 
locity of a cannon-ball, it would take hundreds of 
thousands of years before it described that mighty 
interval which separates the nearest of the fixed 
stars from our sun and from our system. If this 
earth, which moves at more than the inconceivable 
velocity of a million and a half miles a day, were to 
be hurried from its orbit, and to take the same rapid 
flight over this immense tract, it would not have 
arrived at the termination of its journey, after taking 
all the time which has elapsed since the creation of 
the world. These are great numbers, and great 



SKETCH OF MODERN ASTRONOMY. 



calculations ; and the mind feels its own impotency 
in attempting to grasp them. We can state them 
in words. We can exhibit them in figures. We can 
demonstrate them by the powers of a most rigid and 
infallible geometry. But no human fancy can sum- 
mon up a lively or an adequate conception — can 
roam in its ideal flight over this immeasurable large- 
ness — can take in this mighty space in all its 
grandeur, and in all its immensity — can sweep the 
outer boundaries of such a creation — or lift itself up 
to the majesty of that great and invisible arm on 
which all is suspended. 

But what can those stars be which are seated so 
far beyond the limits of our planetary system? They 
must be masses of immense magnitude, or they could 
not be seen at the distance of place which they 
occupy. The light which they give must proceed 
from themselves, for the feeble reflection of light 
from some other quarter would not carry through 
such mighty tracts to the eye of an observer. A 
body may be visible in two ways. It may be visible 
from its own light, as the flame of a candle, or the 
brightness of a fire, or the brilliancy of yonder 
glorious sun, which lightens all below, and is the 
lamp of the world. Or it may be visible from the 
light which falls upon it, as the body which receives 
its light from a taper — or the whole assemblage of 
objects on the surface of the earth, which appear only 
when the light of day rests upon them — or the moon, 
which, in that part of it that is towards the sun, gives 
out a silvery whiteness to the eye of the observer, 
while the other part forms a black and invisible space 
in the firmament — or as the planets, which shine only 



SKETCH OF MODERN ASTRONOMY. 29 

because the sun shines upon them, and which, each 
of them, present the appearance of a dark spot on 
the side that is turned away from it. Now apply 
this question to the fixed stars. Are they luminous 
of themselves, or do they derive their light from the 
sun, like the bodies of our planetary system? Think 
of their immense distance, and the solution of this 
question 'becomes evident. The sun, like any other 
body, must dwindle into a less apparent magnitude 
as you retire from it. At the prodigious distance 
even of the very nearest of the fixed stars, it must 
have shrunk into a small indivisible point. In short, 
it must have become a star itself, and could shed no 
more light than a single individual of those glimmer- 
ing myriads, the whole assemblage of which cannot 
dissipate and can scarcely alleviate the midnight 
darkness of our world. These stars are visible to us, 
'not because the sun shines upon them, but because 
they shine of themselves, because they are so many 
luminous bodies scattered over the tracts of immen- 
sity — in a word, because they are so many suns, each 
throned in the centre of his own dominions, and 
pouring a flood of light over his ow r n portion of these 
unlimitable regions. Jfj ^ h{v/ flm & „ ohoh 

At such an immense distance for observation, it 
is not to be supposed, that we can collect many points 
of resemblance between the fixed stars, and the solar 
star which forms the centre of our planetary system. 
There is one point of resemblance, however, which 
has not escaped the penetration of our astronomers. 
We know that our sun turns round upon himself in 
a regular period of time. We also know that there 

are dark spots scattered over his surface, which, 

^ino smna ffoinw ^oiTBiq oHj <n> To — TCiQTur>m m&nrvi 



30 



SKETCH OF MODERN ASTRONOMY. 



though invisible to the naked eye, are perfectly 
noticeable by our instruments. If these spots ex- 
isted in greater quantity upon one side than upon 
another, it would have the general effect of making 
that side darker; and the revolution of the sun must, 
in such a case, give us a brighter and a fainter side, 
by regular alternations. Now, there are some of the 
fixed stars which present this appearance. They pre- 
sent us with periodical variations of light. From 
the splendour of a star of the first or second magni- 
tude, they fade away into some of the inferior magni- 
tudes — and one, by becoming invisible, might give 
reason to apprehend that we had lost him altogether — 
but we can still recognise him by the telescope, till 
at length he reappears in his own place, and, after 
a regular lapse of so many days and hours, recovers 
his original brightness. Now, the fair inference 
from this is, that the fixed stars, as they resemble* 
our sun in being so many luminous masses of im- 
mense magnitude, resemble him in this also, that 
each of them turns round upon his own axis ; so 
that if any of them should have an inequality in 
the brightness of their sides, this revolution is ren- 
dered evident, by the regular variations in th ede- 
gree of light which it undergoes. 

Shall we say, then, of these vast luminaries, that 
they were created in vain? Were they called into 
existence for no other purpose than to throw a tide 
of useless splendour over the solitudes of immensity ? 
Our sun is only one of these luminaries, and we know 
that lie has worlds in his train. Why should we 
strip the rest of this princely attendance? Why 
may not each of them be the centre of his own sys- 



SKETCH OF MODERN ASTRONOMY. 31 

tern, and give light to his own worlds ? It is true 
that we see them not ; but could the eye of man take 
its flight into those distant regions, it would lose 
sight of our little world before it reached the outer 
limits of our system — the greater planets would dis- 
appear in their turn — before it had described a small 
portion of that abyss which separates us from the 
fixed stars, the sun would decline into a little spot, 
and all its splendid retinue of worlds be lost in the 
obscurity of distance — he would at last shrink into 
a small indivisible atom, and all that could be seen 
of this magnificent system, would be reduced to the 
glimmering of a little star. Why resist any longer 
the grand and interesting conclusion ? Each of these 
stars may be the token of a system as vast and as 
splendid as the one which we inhabit. Worlds roll 
in these distant regions ; and these worlds must be 
the mansions of life and of intelligence. In yon 
gilded canopy of heaven, we see the broad aspect 
of the universe, where each shining point presents 
us with a sun, and each sun with a system of worlds 
— where the Divinity reigns in all the grandeur of 
His attributes — where He peoples immensity with 
His wonders ; and travels in the greatness of His 
strength through the dominions of one vast and 
unlimited monarchy. 

The contemplation has no limits. If we ask the 
number of suns and of systems, the unassisted eye 
of man can take in a thousand, and the best tele- 
scope which the genius of man has constructed can 
take in eighty millions. But why subject the domi- 
nions of the universe to the eye of man, or to the 
powers of his genius ? Fancy may take its flight far 



32 



SKETCH OF MODERN ASTUONOMV. 



beyond the ken of eye or of telescope. It may ex- 
patiate in the outer regions of all that is visible — 
and shall we have the boldness to say, that there is 
nothing there ? that the wonders of the Almighty are 
at an end, because we can no longer trace His foot- 
steps ? that his omnipotence is exhausted, because 
human art can no longer follow Him ? that the crea- 
tive energy of God has sunk into repose, because the 
imagination is enfeebled by the magnitude of its 
efforts, and can keep no longer on the wing through 
those mighty tracts, which shoot far beyond what 
eye hath seen, or the heart of man hath conceiv- 
ed — which sweep endlessly along, and merge into an 
awful and mysterious infinity ? 

Before bringing to a close this rapid and imperfect 
sketch of our modern astronomy, it may be right to 
advert to two points of interesting speculation, both 
of which serve to magnify our conceptions of the 
universe, and, of course, to give us a more affecting 
sense of the comparative insignificance of this our 
world. The first is suggested by the consideration, 
that if a body be struck in the direction of its centre, 
it obtains, from this impulse, a progressive motion, 
but without any movement of revolution being at the 
same time impressed upon it. It simply goes for- 
ward, but docs not turn round upon itself. But, 
again, should the stroke not be in the direction of 
the centre — should the line which joins the point of 
percussion to the centre, make an angle with that 
line in which the impulse was communicated, then 
the body is both made to go forward in space, and 
also to wheel upon its axis. In this way, each of 
our planets may have had its compound motion com- 



SKETCH OF MODERN ASTRONOMY. 



33 



municated to it by one single impulse ; and, on the 
other hand, if ever the rotatory motion be communi- 
cated by one blow, then the progressive motion must 
go along with it. In order to have the first motion 
without the second, there must be a two-fold force 
applied to the body in opposite directions. It must 
be set a-going in the same way as a spinning-top, so 
as to revolve about an axis, and to keep unchanged 
its situation in space. The planets have both mo- 
tions ; and, therefore, may have received them by one 
and the same impulse. The sun, we are certain, has 
one of these motions. He has a movement of revolu- 
tion. If spun round his axis by two opposite forces, 
one on each side of him, he may have this move- 
ment, and retain an inflexible position in space. But 
if this movement was given him by one stroke, he 
must have a progressive motion along with a whirl- 
ing motion ; or, in other words, he is moving forward, 
he is describing a tract in space ; and, in so doing, 
he carries all his planets and all their secondaries 
along with him. 

But at this stage of the argument, the matter only 
remains a conjectural point of speculation. The sun 
may have had his rotation impressed upon him by a 
spinning impulse ; or, without recurring to secondary 
causes at all, this movement may be coeval with his 
being, and he may have derived both the one and 
the other from an immediate fiat of the Creator. 
But there is an actually observed phenomenon of the 
heavens, which advances the conjecture into a pro- 
bability. In the course of ages, the stars in one 
quarter of the celestial sphere are apparently reced- 
ing from each other ; and, in the opposite quarter, 

c 



34 



SKETCH OF MODERN ASTRONOMY. 



they are apparently drawing nearer to each other. 
If the sun be approaching the former quarter, and 
receding from the latter, this phenomenon admits of 
an easy explanation ; and we are furnished with a 
magnificent step in the scale of the Creator's work- 
manship. In the same manner as the planets, with 
their satellites, revolve round the sun, may the sun, 
with all his tributaries, be moving, in common with 
other stars, around some distant centre, from which 
there emanates an influence to bind and to subordi- 
nate them all. They may be kept from approaching 
each other by a centrifugal force ; without which 
the laws of attraction might consolidate, into one 
stupendous mass, all the distinct globes of which the 
universe is composed. Our sun may, therefore, be 
only one member of a higher family — taking his part, 
along with millions of others, in some loftier system 
of mechanism by which they are all subjected to one 
law and to one arrangement — describing the sweep 
of such an orbit in space, and completing the mighty 
revolution in such a period of time, as to reduce our 
planetary seasons and our planetary movements to 
a very humble and fractionary rank in the scale of 
a hio-her astronomv. There is room for all this in 
immensity, and there is even argument for all this 
in the records of actual observation ; and from the 
whole of this speculation do we gather a new em- 
phasis to the lesson, how minute is the place, and 
how secondary is the importance of our world, amid 
the glories of such a surrounding magnificence. 

But there is still another very interesting tract of 
speculation which has been opened up to us by the 
more recent observations of astronomy. What we 



SKETCH OF MODERN ASTRONOMY. 



0r> 



allude to, is the discovery of the nebulce. We allow 
that it is but a dim and indistinct light which this 
discovery lias thrown upon the structure of the uni- 
verse ; but still it has spread before the eye of the 
mind a field of very wide and lofty contemplation. 
Anterior to this discovery, the universe might ap- 
pear to have been composed of an indefinite number 
of suns, about equidistant from each other, uni- 
formly scattered over space, and each encompassed 
by such a planetary attendance as takes place in our 
own system. But we have now reason to think, 
that instead of lying uniformly, and in a state of 
equidistance from each other, they are arranged into 
distinct clusters — that in the same manner as the 
distance of the nearest fixed stars so inconceivably 
superior to that of our planets from each other, marks 
the separation of the solar systems, so the distance 
of two contiguous clusters may be so inconceiv- 
ably superior to the reciprocal distance of those 
fixed stars which belong to the same cluster, as to 
mark an equally distinct separation of the clusters, 
and to constitute each of them an individual mem- 
ber of some higher and more extended arrangement. 
This carries us upwards through another ascending- 
step in the scale of magnificence, and there leaves us 
in the uncertainty, whether even here the wonder- 
ful progression is ended ; and, at all events, fixes the 
assured conclusion in our minds, that, to an eye 
which could spread itself over the whole, the man- 
sion which accommodates our species, might be so 
very small as to lie wrapped in microscopical con- 
cealment ; and in reference to the only Being who 
possesses this universal eye, well might we S av 



36 



SKETCH OF MODERN ASTRONOMY. 



" What is man, that thou art mindful of him ; or 
the son of man, that thou shouldest deign to visit 
him r 

And, after all, though it be a mighty and diffi- 
cult conception, yet who can question it ? What is 
seen may be nothing to what is unseen : for what is 
seen is limited by the range of our instruments. 
What is unseen has no limit ; and though all which 
the eye of man can take in, or his fancy can grasp, 
were swept away, there might still remain as ample 
a field over which the Divinity may expatiate, and 
which He may have peopled with innumerable 
worlds. If the whole visible creation were to dis- 
appear, it would leave a solitude behind it — but to 
the Infinite Mind that can take in the whole system 
of nature, this solitude might be nothing ; a small 
unoccupied point in that immensity which surrounds 
it, and which he may have filled with the wonders 
of his omnipotence. Though this earth were to be 
burned up, though the trumpet of its dissolution 
were sounded, though yon sky were to pass away as 
a scroll, and every visible glory which the finger of 
the Divinity has inscribed on it, were to be put out 
for ever — an event so awful to us and to every 
world in our vicinity, by which so many suns would 
be extinguished, and so many varied scenes of life 
and of population would rush into forgctfulness — 
what is it in the high scale of the Almighty's work- 
manship ? — a mere shred, which though scattered in- 
to nothing, would leave the universe of God one 
entire scene of greatness and of majesty. Though 
this earth, and these heavens, were to disappear, 
there are other worlds which roll afar; the light of 



SKETCH OF MODERN ASTRONOMY. 



37 



other suns shines upon them, and the sky which 
mantles them is garnished with other stars. Is it 
presumption to say, that the moral world extends 
to these distant and unknown regions ; that they 
are occupied with people ; that the charities of home 
and of neighbourhood flourish there ; that the 
praises of God are there lifted up, and his goodness 
rejoiced in ; that piety has there its temples and its 
offerings ; and the richness of the divine attributes 
is there felt and admired by intelligent worship- 
pers? 

And what is this world in the immensity which 
teems with them — and what are they who occupy 
it ? The universe at large would suffer as little, 
in its splendour and variety, by the destruction of 
our planet, as the verdure and sublime magnitude 
of a forest would suffer by the fall of a single leaf. 
The leaf quivers on the branch which supports it. 
It lies at the mercy of the slightest accident. A 
breath of wind tears it from its stem, and it lights 
on the stream of water which passes underneath. 
In a moment of time, the life which we know, by 
the microscope, it teems with, is extinguished ; and 
an occurrence so insignificant in the eye of man, 
and on the scale of his observation, carries in it, to 
the myriads which people this little leaf, an event 
as terrible and as decisive as the destruction of a 
world. Now, on the grand scale of the universe, 
we, the occupiers of this ball, which performs its 
little round among the suns and the systems that 
astronomy has unfolded — we may feel the same 
littleness and the same insecurity. We differ from 
the leaf only in this circumstance, that it would 



38 



SKETCH OF MODERN ASTRONOMY. 



require tlie operation of greater elements to destro 
us. But these elements exist. The fire which rage 
within, may lift its devouring energy to the surface 
of our planet, and transform it into one wide and 
wasting volcano. The sudden formation of elastic 
matter in the bowels of the earth — and it lies within 
the agency of known substances to accomplish this 
— may explode it into fragments. The exhala- 
tion of noxious air from below may impart a viru- 
lence to the air that is around us ; it may affect the 
delicate proportion of its ingredients ; and the whole 
of animated nature may wither and die under the 
malignity of a tainted atmosphere. A blazing 
comet may cross this fated planet in its orbit, and 
realize all the terrors, which superstition has con- 
ceived of it. We cannot anticipate with precision 
the consequences of an event which every astrono- 
mer must know to lie within the limits of chance 
and probability. It may hurry our globe towards 
the sun — or drag it to the outer regions of the 
planetary system — or give it a new axis of revolu- 
tion : and the effect, which I shall simply announce, 
without explaining it, would be to change the place 
of the ocean, and bring another mighty flood upon 
our islands and continents. These are changes 
which may happen in a single instant of time, and 
against which nothing known in the present system 
of things provides us with any security. They 
might not annihilate the earth, but they would 
unpeople it ; and we who tread its surface with 
such firm and assured footsteps, are at the mercy 
of devouring elements, which, if let loose upon us 
by the hand of the Almighty, would spread solitude 



SKETCH OF MODERN ASTRONOMY. 



39 



and silence and death over the dominions of the 
world. 

Now, it is this littleness, and this insecurity, which 
make the protection of the Almighty so dear to us, 
and bring, with such emphasis, to every pious bosom, 
the holy lessons of humility and gratitude. The God 
who sitteth above, and presides in high authority 
over all worlds, is mindful of man ; and though at 
this moment His energy is felt in the remotest 
provinces of creation, we may feel the same security 
in His providence, as if we were the objects of his 
undivided care. It is not for us to bring our minds 
up to this mysterious agency. But such is the in- 
comprehensible fact, that the same Being, whose eye 
is abroad over the whole universe, gives vegetation 
to every blade of grass, and motion to every particle 
of blood which circulates through the veins of the 
minutest animal ; that though His mind takes into 
its comprehensive grasp, immensity and all its 
wonders, I am as much known to Him as if I were 
the single object of His attention — that He marks 
all my thoughts — that He gives birth to every feel- 
ing and every movement within me — and that with 
an exercise of power which I can neither describe 
nor comprehend, the same God who sits in the 
highest heaven, and reigns over the glories of 
the firmament, is at my right hand, to give me 
every breath which I draw, and every comfort which 
I enjoy. 

But this very reflection has been appropriated to 
the use of Infidelity, and the very language of the 
text has been made to bear an application of hostility 
to the faith. " What is man, that God should be 



40 



SKETCH OF MODERN ASTROXOMT. 



mindful of him ; or the son of man, that he should 
deign to visit him ?" Is it likely, says the Infidel, 
that God would send His eternal Son to die for the 
puny occupiers of so insignificant a province in the 
mighty field of his creation ? Are we the befitting 
objects of so great and so signal an interposition ? 
Does not the largeness of that field which astronomy 
lays open to the view of modern science, throw a 
suspicion over the truth of the gospel history ? and 
how shall we reconcile the greatness of that wonder- 
ful movement which was made in heaven for the 
redemption of fallen man, with the comparative 
meanness and obscurity of our species ? 

This is a popular argument, against Christianity, 
not much dwelt upon in books, but, we believe, a 
good deal insinuated in conversation, and having 
no small influence on the amateurs of a superficial 
philosophy. At all events, it is right that every 
such argument should be met and manfully con- 
fronted ; nor do we know a more discreditable sur- 
render of our religion, than to act as if she had 
anything to fear from the ingenuity of her most 
accomplished adversaries. The author of the follow- 
ing treatise engages in his present undertaking 
under the full impression that a something may be 
found with which to combat Infidelity in all its 
forms ; that the truth of God and of His message 
admits of a noble and decisive manifestation, through 
every mist which the pride or the prejudice or the 
sophistry of man may throw around it ; and elevated 
as the wisdom of him may be who has ascended the 
heights of science, and poured the light of demon- 
stration over the most wondrous of nature's mys- 



SKETCH OF MODERN ASTRONOMY. 



41 



teries, that even out of his own principles it may be 
proved, how much more elevated is the wisdom of 
him who sits with the docility of a little child to 
his Bible, and casts down to its authority all his 
lofty imaginations. 



42 



HIE MODESTY OF TRUE SCIENCE. 



DISCOURSE IX 

THE MODESTY OF TRUE SCIENCE. 



" And if any man think that he knoweth any thing, lie knoweth 
nothing yet as he ought to know." — 1 Corinthians viii 2. 

There is much profound and important wisdom 
in that proverb of Solomon, where it is said, that 
" the heart knoweth its own bitterness/' It forms 
part of a truth still more comprehensive, that every 
man knoweth his own peculiar feelings and diffi- 
culties and trials, far better than he can get any of 
his neighbours to perceive them. It is natural to 
us all, that we should desire to engross, to the utter- 
most, the sympathy of others with what is most 
painful to the sensibilities of our own bosom, and 
with what is most aggravating in the hardships of 
our own situation. But, labour as we may, we can- 
not, with every power of expression, make an ade- 
quate conveyance, as it were, of all our sensations, 
and of all our circumstances, into another's under- 
standing. There is a something in the intimacy of 
a man's own experience, which he cannot make to 
pass entire into the heart and mind even of his most 
familiar companion, — and thus it is, that he is so 
often defeated in his attempts to obtain a full and 
a cordial possession of his sympathy. lie is mor- 



THE MODESTY OF TRUE SCIENCE. 



43 



titled, and he wonders at the obtuseness of the people 
around him — and that he cannot get them to enter 
into the justness of his complainings — nor to feel the 
point upon which turn the truth and the reason of 
his remonstrances — nor to give their interested 
attention to the case of his peculiarities and of his 
wrongs — nor to kindle, in generous resentment, along 
with him, when he starts the topic of his indignation. 
He does not reflect, all the while, that with every 
human being he addresses, there is an inner man 
which forms a theatre of passions and of interests 
as busy, as crowded, and as fitted as his own to en- 
gross the anxious and the exercised feelings of a 
heart which can alone understand its own bitterness, 
and lay a correct estimate on the burden of its own 
visitations. Every man we meet carries about with 
him, in the unperceived solitude of his bosom, a 
little world of his own — and we are just as blind, 
and as insensible, and as dull, both of perception 
and of sympathy, about his engrossing objects, as 
he is about ours ; and did we suffer this observa- 
tion to have all its weight upon us, it might serve 
to make us more candid and more considerate of 
others. It might serve to abate the monopolizing 
selfishness of our nature. It might serve to soften 
down all the malignity which comes out of those 
envious contemplations that we are so apt to cast on 
the fancied ease and prosperity which are around 
us. It might serve to reconcile every man to his 
own lot, and dispose him to bear with thankfulness 
his own burden ; and if this train of sentiment were 
prosecuted with firmness and calmness and impar- 
tiality, it would lead to the conclusion, that each 



44 



THE MODESTY OF TRUE SCIENCE. 



profession in life has its own peculiar pains, and its 
own besetting inconveniences — that from the very 
bottom of society up to the golden pinnacle which 
blazons upon its summit, there is much in the shape 
of care and of suffering to be found — that through- 
out all the conceivable varieties of human condition, 
there are trials which can neither be adequately 
told on the one side, nor fully understood on the 
other — that the ways of God to man are as equal in 
this as in every department of his administration — 
and that, go to whatever quarter of human experi- 
ence we may, we shall find that he has provided 
enough to exercise the patience and to accomplish 
the purposes of a wise and a salutary discipline upon 
all his children. 

I have brought forward this observation, that it 
may prepare the way for a second. There are per- 
haps no two sets of human beings who comprehend 
less the movements and enter less into the cares and 
concerns of each other, than the wide and busy 
public on the one hand, and on the other, those men 
of close and studious retirement, whom the world 
never hears of, save when, from their thoughtful soli- 
tude, there issues forth some splendid discovery to 
set the world on a gaze of admiration. Then will 
the brilliancy of a superior genius draw every eye 
towards it — and the homage paid to intellectual 
superiority will place its idol on a loftier eminence 
than all wealth or than all titles can bestow — and 
the name of the successful philosopher will circulate, 
in his own age, over the whole extent of civilized 
society, and be borne down to posterity in the 
characters of ever-during remembrance : and thus it 



THE MODESTY OF TRUE SCIENCE. 



45 



is, that, when we look back on the days of Newton, 
we annex a kind of mysterious greatness to him, 
who, by the pure force of his understanding, rose to 
such a gigantic elevation above the level of ordinary 
men — and the kings and warriors of other days sink 
into insignificance around him — and he, at this 
moment, stands forth to the public eye, in a prouder 
array of glory than circles the memory of all the 
men of former generations — and while all the vulgar 
grandeur of other days is now mouldering in forget* 
fulness, the achievements of our great astronomer are 
still fresh in the veneration of his countrymen, and 
they carry him forward on the stream of time, with 
a reputation ever gathering, and the triumphs of a 
distinction that will never die. 

Now, the point that I want to impress upon you 
is, that the same public, who are so dazzled and 
overborne by the lustre of all this superiority, are 
utterly in the dark as to what that is which confers 
its chief merit on the philosophy of Newton. They 
see the result of his labours, but they know not how 
to appreciate the difficulty or the extent of them. 
They look on the stately edifice he has reared, but ' 
they know not what he had to do in settling the 
foundation which gives to it all its stability ; nor 
are they aware what painful encounters he had to 
make, both with the natural predilections of his own 
heart, and with the prejudices of others, when em- 
ployed on the work of laying together its unperishing 
materials. They have never heard of the contro- 
versies w T hich this man, of peaceful unambitious 
modesty, had to sustain with all that was proud and 
all that was intolerant in the philosophy of the age. 



46 



THE MODESTY OF TRUE SCIENCE. 



They have never, in thought, entered that closet 
which was the scene of his patient and profound ex- 
ercises — nor have they gone along with him, as he 
gave his silent hours to the labours of the midnight 
oil, and plied that unwearied task to which the 
charm of lofty contemplation had allured him — nor 
have they accompanied him through all the workings 
of that wonderful mind, from which, as from the re- 
cesses of a laboratory, there came forth such gleams 
and processes of thought as shed an effulgency over 
the whole amplitude of nature. All this the public 
have not done ; for of this the great majority, even 
of the reading and cultivated public, are utterly in- 
capable ; and therefore is it that they need to be 
told what that is, in which the main distinction of 
his philosophy lies ; that when labouring in other 
fields of investigation, they may know how to borrow 
from his safe example, and how to profit by that 
superior wisdom which marked the whole conduct 
of his understanding. 

Let it be understood, then, that they are the 
positive discoveries of Newton, which in the eye of 
a superficial public, confer upon him all his reputa- 
tion. He discovered the mechanism of the planetary 
system. He discovered the composition of light. 
He discovered the cause of those alternate move- 
ments which take place on the waters of the ocean. 
These form his actual and his visible achievements. 
These are what the world look to as the monuments 
of his greatness. These are doctrines by which he 
has enriched the field of philosophy ; and thus it is, 
that the whole of his merit is supposed to lie in 
having had the sagacity to perceive, and the vigour 



TUK MODESTY OF TRUE SCIENCE. 



47 



to lay hold of the proofs, which conferred upon these 
doctrines all the establishment of a most rigid and 
conclusive demonstration. 

But while he gets all his credit, and all his ad- 
miration for those articles of science which he has 
added to the creed of philosophers, he deserves as 
much credit and admiration for those articles which 
he kept out of this creed, as for those which he in- 
troduced into it. It was the property of his mind 
that it kept a tenacious hold of every one position 
which had proof to substantiate it : but it forms a 
property equally characteristic, and which, in fact, 
gives its leading peculiarity to the whole spirit and 
style of his investigations, that he put a most de- 
termined exclusion on every one position that was 
destitute of such proof. He would not admit the 
astronomical theories of those who went before him, 
because they had no proof. He would not give in 
to their notions about the planets wheeling their 
rounds in whirlpools of ether — for he did not see 
this ether — he had no proof of its existence : and, 
besides, even supposing it to exist, it would not 
have impressed on the heavenly bodies such move- 
ments as met his observation. He would not 
submit his judgment to the reigning systems of the 
day — for, though they had authority to recommend 
them, they had no proof ; and thus it is, that he 
evinced the strength and the soundness of his phi- 
losophy, as much by his decisions upon those 
doctrines of science which he rejected, as by his 
demonstration of those doctrines of science which 
he was the first to propose, and which now stand 
out to the eye of posterity as the only monu- 



48 



THE MODEST i OF TRUE SCIENCE. 



ments to the force and superiority of his under- 
standing. 

He wanted no other recommendation for any 
one article of science, than the recommendation of 
evidence — and with this recommendation he opened 
to it the chamber of his mind, though authority 
scowled upon it, and taste was disgusted by it, and 
fashion was ashamed of it, and all the beauteous 
speculation of former days was cruelly broken up by 
this new announcement of the better philosophy, 
and scattered like the fragments of an aerial vision, 
over which the past generations of the world had 
been slumbering their profound and their pleasing 
reverie. But, on the other hand, should the article 
of science w T ant the recommendation of evidence, he 
shut against it all the avenues of his understanding ; 
and though all antiquity lent their suffrages to it, 
and all eloquence had thrown around it the most 
attractive brilliancy, and all habit had incorporated 
it with every system of every seminary in Europe, 
and all fancy had arrayed it in graces of the most 
tempting solicitation — yet was the steady and in- 
flexible mind of Newton proof against this whole 
weight of authority and allurement, and casting his 
cold and unwelcome look at the specious plausibility, 
he rebuked it from his presence. The strength of 
his philosophy lay as much in refusing admittance 
to that which wanted evidence, as in giving a place 
and an occupancy to that which possessed it. In 
that march of intellect which led him onwards 
through the rich and magnificent field of his dis- 
coveries, he pondered every step ; and while he 
advanced with a firm and assured movement, where- 



THE MODESTY OF TRUE SCIENCE. 



ever the light of evidence carried him, he never 
suffered any glare of imagination or of prejudice to 
seduce him from his path. 

Certain it is, that, in the prosecution of his won- 
derful career, he found himself on a way beset with 
temptation upon every side of him. It Avas not 
merely that he had the reigning taste and philosophy 
of the times to contend with. But he expatiated on 
a lofty region, where, in all the giddiness of success, 
he might have met with much to solicit his fancy, 
and tempt him to some devious speculation. Had 
he been like the majority of other men, he would 
have broken free from the fetters of a sober and 
chastised understanding, and, giving wing to his 
imagination, had done what philosophers have done 
after him — been carried away by some meteor of 
their own forming, or found their amusement in 
some of their own intellectual pictures, or palmed 
some loose and confident plausibilities of their own 
upon the world. But Newton stood true to his 
principle, that he would take up with nothing which 
wanted evidence, and he kept by his demonstrations, 
and his measurements, and his proofs ; and if it be 
true that he who ruleth his own spirit is greater 
than he who taketh a city, there was won, in the 
solitude of his chamber, many a repeated victory 
over himself, which should give a brighter lustre to 
his name than all the conquests he has made on the 
field of discovery, or than all the splendour of his 
positive achievements. 

I trust you understand, that, though it be one of 
the maxims of the true philosophy, never to shrink 
from a doctrine which has evidence on its side, it is 

7 D 



50 



THE MODESTY OF TRUE SCIENCE. 



another maxim, equally essential to it, never to 
harbour any doctrine when this evidence is wanting. 
Take these two maxims along with you, and you 
will be at no loss to explain the peculiarity which, 
more than any other, goes both to characterize and 
to ennoble the philosophy of Newton. What I al- 
lude to is, the precious combination of its strength 
and of its modesty. On the one hand, what greater 
evidence of strength than the fulfilment of that 
mighty enterprise, by which the heavens have been 
made its own, and the mechanism of unnumbered 
worlds has been brought within the grasp of the 
human understanding ? Now, it was by walking 
in the light of sound and competent evidence, that 
all this was accomplished. It was by the patient, 
the strenuous, the unfaltering application of the 
legitimate instruments of discovery. It was by 
touching that which was tangible, and looking to 
that which was visible, and computing that which 
was measurable, and, in one word, by making a 
right and a reasonable use of all that proof which 
the field of nature around us has brought within the 
limit of sensible observation. This is the arena on 
which the modern philosophy has won all her vic- 
tories, and fulfilled all her wondrous achievements, 
and reared all her proud and enduring monuments, 
and gathered all her magnificent trophies, to that 
power of intellect with which the hand of a bounte- 
ous heaven has so richly gifted the constitution of 
our species. 

But, on the other hand, go beyond the limits of 
sensible observation, and from that moment the 
genuine disciples of this enlightened school cast all 



THE MODESTY OF TRUE SCIENCE. 



51 



their confidence and all their intrepidity away from 
them. Keep them on the firm ground of experi- 
ment, and none more bold and more decisive in their 
announcements of all that they have evidence for — 
but, off this ground, none more humble, or more cau- 
tious of any thing like positive announcements, than 
they. They choose neither to know, nor to believe, nor 
to assert, where evidence is wanting, and they will 
sit, with all the patience of a scholar to his task, till 
they have found it. They are utter strangers to that 
haughty confidence with which some philosophers 
of the day sport the plausibilities of unauthorized 
speculation, and by which, unmindful of the limit 
that separates the region of sense from the region 
of conjecture, they make their blind and their im- 
petuous inroads into a province which does not 
belong to them. There is no one object to which 
the exercised mind of a true, Newtonian disciple 
is more familiarized than this limit, and it serves as 
a boundary by which he shapes, and bounds, and 
regulates all the enterprises of his philosophy. All 
the space which lies within this limit he cultivates 
to the uttermost ; and it is by such successive la- 
bours, that every year which rolls over the world 
is witnessing some new contribution to experimental 
science, and adding to the solidity and aggrandize- 
ment of this wonderful fabric. But if true to their 
own principle, then, in reference to the forbidden 
ground which lies without this limit, those very men, 
who, on the field of warranted exertion, evinced all 
the hardihood and vigour of a full-grown under- 
standing, show, on every subject where the light of 
evidence is withheld from them, all the modesty of 



52 



THE MODESTY OF TRUE SCIENCE. 



children. They give us positive opinion only when 
they have indisputable proof — but when they have 
no such proof, then they have no such opinion. The 
single principle of their respect to truth secures 
their homage for every one position where the evi- 
dence of truth is present, and at the same time be- 
gets an entire diffidence about every one position 
from which this evidence is disjoined. And thus 
we may understand how the first man in the accom- 
plishments of philosophy, which the world ever saw, 
sat at the book of nature in the humble attitude of 
its interpreter and its pupil — how all the docility of 
conscious ignorance threw a sweet and softening- 
lustre around the radiance even of his most splendid 
discoveries : and, while the flippancy of a few super- 
ficial acquirements is enough to place a philosopher 
of the day on the pedestal of his fancied elevation, 
and to vest him with an assumed lordship over the 
whole domain of natural and revealed knowledge, 
we cannot forbear to do honour to the unpretend- 
ing greatness of Newton, than whom we know not 
if there ever lighted on the face of our world, one in 
the character of whose admirable genius so much 
force and so much humility were more attractively 
blended. 

I iioav propose to carry you forward, by a few 
simple illustrations, to the argument of this day. 
All the sublime truths of the modern astronomy lie 
within the field of actual observation, and have the 
firm evidence to rest upon of all that information 
which is conveyed to us by the avenue of the senses. 
Sir Isaac Newton never went beyond this field 
without a reverential impression upon his mind of 



THE MODESTY OF TRUE SCIENCE. 



53 



the precariousness of the ground on which he was 
standing. On this ground he never ventured a 
positive affirmation — but, resigning the lofty tone 
of demonstration, and putting on the modesty of 
conscious ignorance, he brought forward all he had 
to say in the humble form of a doubt, or a conjecture, 
or a question. But what he had not confidence 
to do, other philosophers have done after him — and 
they have winged their audacious way into forbidden 
regions — and they have crossed that circle by which 
the field of observation is enclosed — and there have 
they debated and dogmatized with all the pride of 
a most intolerant assurance. 

Now, though the case be imaginary, let us con- 
ceive, for the sake of illustration, that one of these 
philosophers made so extravagant a departure from 
the sobriety of experimental science, as to pass on 
from the astronomy of the different planets, and to 
attempt the natural history of their animal and vege- 
table kingdoms. He might get hold of some vague 
and general analogies, to throw an air of plausibility 
around his speculation. He might pass from the bo- 
tany of the different regions of the globe that we 
inhabit, and make his loose and confident applica- 
tions to each of the other planets, according to its 
distance from the sun, and the inclination of its axis 
to the plane of its annual revolution ; and out of 
some such slender materials, he might work up an 
amusing philosophical romance, full of ingenuity, 
and having, withal, the colour of truth and of con- 
sistency spread over it. 

I can conceive how a superficial public might be 
delighted by the eloquence of such a composition, 



54 



THE MODESTY OF TRUE SCIENCE. 



and even be impressed by its arguments ; but were 
I asked, which is the man of all the ages and coun- 
tries in the world, who would have the least respect 
for this treatise upon the plants which grow on the 
surface of Jupiter, I should be at no loss to answer 
the question. I should say, that it would be he who 
had computed the motions of Jupiter — that it would 
be he who had measured the bulk and the density 
of Jupiter — that it would be he who had estimated 
the periods of Jupiter — that it would be he whose 
observant eye and patiently calculating mind, had 
traced the satellites of Jupiter through all the rounds 
of their mazy circulation, and unravelled the intri- 
cacy of all their movements. He would see at once 
that the subject lay at a hopeless distance beyond 
the field of legitimate observation. It would be 
quite enough for him, that it was beyond the range 
of his telescope. On this ground, and on this ground 
only, would he reject it as one of the puniest imbe- 
cilities of childhood. As to any character of truth 
or of importance, it would have no more effect on 
such a mind as that of Newton, than any illusion of 
poetry ; and from the eminence of his intellectual 
throne, would he cast a penetrating glance at the 
whole speculation, and bid its gaudy insignificance 
away from him. 

But let us pass onward to another case, which, 
though as imaginary as the former, may still serve 
the purpose of illustration. 

This same adventurous philosopher may be con- 
ceived to shift his speculation from the plants of 
another world, to the character of its inhabitants. 
Ee may avail himself of some slender corresponden- 



THE MODESTY OF TREE SCIENCE. 



55 



cies between the heat of the sun and the moral tem- 
perament of the people it shines upon. He may 
work up a theory, which carries on the front of it 
some of the characters of plausibility; but surely it 
does not require the philosophy of Newton to demon- 
strate the folly of such an enterprise. There is not 
a man of plain understanding, who does not perceive 
that this ambitious inquirer has got without his 
reach — that he has stepped beyond the field of ex- 
perience, and is now expatiating on the field of ima- 
gination — that he has ventured on a dark unknown, 
where the wisest of all philosophy is the philosophy 
of silence, and a profession of ignorance is the best 
evidence of a solid understanding — that if he thinks 
he knows anything on such a subject as this, "he 
knoweth nothing yet as he ought to know/' He 
knows not what Newton knew, and what he kept a 
steady eye upon throughout the whole march of his 
sublime investigations. He knows not the limit of 
his own faculties. He has overleaped the barrier 
which hems in all the possibilities of human attain- 
ment. He has wantonly flung himself off from the 
safe and firm field of observation, and got on that 
undiscoverable ground, where, by every step he takes, 
he widens his distance from the true philosophy, and 
by every affirmation he utters, he rebels against the 
authority of all its maxims. 

I can conceive it to be your feeling, that I have 
hitherto indulged in a vain expense of argument, 
and it is most natural for you to put the question, 
" What is the precise point of convergence to which 
I am directing all the light of this abundant and 
seemingly superfluous illustration ¥ 



56 



THE MODESTY OF TRUE SCIENCE. 



In the astronomical objection which Infidelity has 
proposed against the truth of the Christian revelation, 
there is first an assertion, and then an argument. 
The assertion is, that Christianity is set up for the 
exclusive benefit of our minute and solitary world. 
The argument is, that God would not lavish such a 
quantity of attention on so insignificant a field. 
Even though the assertion were admitted, I should 
have a quarrel with the argument. But the futility 
of the objection is not laid open in all its extent, un- 
less we expose the utter want of all essential evidence 
even for the truth of the assertion. How do infidels 
know that Christianity is set up for the single bene- 
fit of this earth and its inhabitants ? How are they 
able to tell us, that if you go to other planets, the 
person and the religion of Jesus are there unknown 
to them ? We challenge them to the proof of this 
announcement. We see in this objection the same 
rash and gratuitous procedure, which was so appa- 
rent in the two cases that we have already advanced 
for the purpose of illustration. We see in it the same- 
glaring transgression on the spirit and the maxims 
of that very philosophy which they profess to idolize. 
They have made their argument against us, out of 
an assertion which has positively no ascertained fact 
to rest upon — an assertion which they have no means 
whatever of verifying — an assertion, the truth or the 
falsehood of which can only be gathered out of some 
supernatural message, for it lies completely beyond 
the range of human observation. It is willingly ad- 
mitted, that by an attempt at the botany of other 
worlds, the true method of philosophizing is trampled 
on ; for this is a subject that lies beyond the range 



THE MODEST Y OF TRUE SCIENCE. 



57 



of actual observation, and every performance upon 
it must be made up of assertions without proofs. It 
is also willingly admitted, that an attempt at the 
civil and political history of their people, would be 
an equally extravagant departure from the spirit of 
the true philosophy ; for this also lies beyond the 
field of actual observation ; and all that could pos- 
sibly be mustered up on such a subject as this, would 
still be assertions without proofs. Now, the theo- 
logy of these planets is, in every way, as inaccessible 
a subject as their politics or their natural history ; 
and therefore it is, that the objection, grounded on 
the confident assumption of those infidel astronomers, 
who assert Christianity to be the religion of this one 
world, or that the religion of these other worlds is 
not our very Christianity, can have no influence on 
a mind that has derived its habits of thinking from 
the pure and rigorous school of Newton ; for the 
whole of this assertion is just as glaringly destitute 
of proof, as in the two former instances. 

The man who could embark in an enterprise so 
foolish and so fanciful, as to theorize on the details 
of the botany of another world, or to theorize on the 
natural and moral history of its people, is just making 
as outrageous a departure from all sense, and all 
science, and all sobriety, when he presumes to specu- 
late, or to assert on the details or the methods of 
God's administration among its rational and account- 
able inhabitants. He wings his fancy to as hazard- 
ous a region, and vainly strives a penetrating vision 
through the mantle of as deep an obscurity. All 
the elements of such a speculation are hidden from 
him. For any thing he can tell, sin has found its 



58 



THE MODESTY OF TRUE SCIENCE. 



way into these other worlds. For any thing lie can 
tell, their people have banished themselves from 
communion with God. For any thing he can tell, 
many a visit has been made to each of them, on the 
subject of our common Christianity, by commissioned 
messengers from the throne of the Eternal. For 
any thing he can tell, the redemption proclaimed to 
us is not one solitary instance, or not the whole of 
that redemption which is by the Son of God — but 
only our part in a plan of mercy, equal in magnifi- 
cence to all that astronomy has brought within the 
range of human contemplation. For any thing he 
can tell, the moral pestilence, which walks abroad 
over the face of our world, may have spread its deso- 
lations over all the planets of all the systems which 
the telescope has made known to us. For any thing 
he can tell, some mighty redemption has been de- 
vised in heaven, to meet this disaster in the whole 
extent and malignity of its visitations. For any 
thing he can tell, the wonder-working God, who has 
strewed the field of immensity with so many wprlds, 
and spread the shelter of His omnipotence over 
them, may have sent a message of love to each, and 
re-assured the hearts of its despairing people by some 
overpowering manifestation of tenderness. For any 
thing he can tell, angels from paradise may have 
sped to every planet their delegated way, and sung, 
from each azure canopy, a joyful annunciation, and 
said, " Peace be to this residence, and goodwill to 
all its families, and glory to Him in the highest, who, 
from the eminency of his throne, has issued an act 
of grace so magnificent, as to carry the tidings of 
life and of acceptance to the unnumbered orbs of a 



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59 



sinful creation/' For any thing he can tell, the 
Eternal Son, of whom it is said, that by Him the 
worlds were created, may have had the government 
of many sinful worlds laid upon His shoulders ; and 
by the power of His mysterious word, have awoke 
them all from that spiritual death, to which they 
had sunk in lethargy as profound as the slumbers of 
non-existence. For any thing he can tell, the one 
Spirit who moved on the face of the waters, and 
whose presiding influence it was that hushed the 
wild war of nature's elements, and made a beauteous 
system emerge out of its disjointed materials, may 
now be working with the fragments of another chaos; 
and educing order, and obedience, and harmony, out 
of the wrecks of a moral rebellion, which reaches 
through all these spheres, and spreads disorder to 
the uttermost limits of our astronomy. 

But here I stop — nor shall I attempt to grope 
further my dark and fatiguing way, among such 
sublime and mysterious secrecies. It is not I who am 
offering to lift this curtain. It is not I who am 
pitching my adventurous flight to the secret things 
which belong to God, away from the things that are 
revealed, and which belong to us, and to our chil- 
dren. It is the champion of that very Infidelity 
which I am now combating. It is he who props his 
unchristian argument, by presumptions fetched out 
of those untravelled obscurities which lie on the 
other side of a barrier that I pronounce to be im- 
passable. It is he who transgresses the limits which 
Newton forbore to enter ; because, with a justness 
which reigns throughout all his inquiries, he saw the 
limit of his own understanding, nor would he venture 



60 



THE MODESTY OF TRUE SCIENCE. 



himself beyond it. It is he who has borrowed from 
the philosophy of this wondrous man a few dazzling 
conceptions, which have only served to bewilder 
him — while, an utter stranger to the spirit of this 
philosophy, he has carried a daring and an ignorant 
speculation far beyond the boundary of its prescribed 
and allowable enterprises. It is he who has mus- 
tered against the truths of the Gospel, resting as it 
does on evidence within the reach of his faculties, 
an objection, for the truth of which he has no evi- 
dence whatever. It is he who puts away from him 
a doctrine, for which he has the substantial and the 
familiar proof of human testimony ; and substitutes 
in its place, a doctrine, for which he can get no other 
support than from a reverie of his own imagination. 
It is he who turns aside from all that safe and cer- 
tain argument, that is supplied by the history of 
this world, of which he knows something ; and who 
loses himself in the work of theorizing about other 
worlds, of the moral and theological history of which 
he positively knows nothing. Upon him, and not 
upon us, lies the folly of launching his impetuous 
way beyond the province of observation — of letting 
his fancy afloat among the unknown of distant and 
mysterious regions — and, by an act of daring, as 
impious as it is unphilosophical, of trying to un- 
wrap that shroud, which, till drawn aside by the 
hand of a messenger from heaven, will ever veil, from 
human eye, the purposes of the Eternal. 

If you have gone along with us in the preceding 
observations, you will perceive how they arc cal- 
culated to disarm of all its point, and of all its 
energy, that flippancy of A r oltairc ; when, in the 



THE MOPE STY OF TRUE SCIENCE. 



6] 



examples he gives of the dotage of the human un- 
derstanding, he tells us of Bacon having believed 
in witchcraft, and Sir Isaac Newton having writ- 
ten a commentary on the Book of Revelation. 
The former instance we shall not undertake to 
vindicate ; but, in the latter instance, we perceive 
what this brilliant and specious, but withal super- 
ficial apostle of Infidelity, either did not see, or 
refused to acknowledge. We see in this intellec- 
tual labour of our great philosopher, the working 
of the very same principles which carried him 
through the profoundest and the 'most successful 
of his investigations ; and how he kept most sa- 
credly and most consistently by those very maxims, 
the authority of which he, even in the full vigour 
and manhood of his faculties, ever recognised. 
We see in the theology of Newton, the very spirit 
and principle which gave all its stability, and all 
its sureness, to the philosophy of Newton. We 
see the same tenacious adherence to every one 
doctrine, that had such valid proof to uphold it, as 
could be gathered from the field of human expe- 
rience ; and we see the same firm resistance of 
every one argument, that had nothing to recom- 
mend it, but such plausibilities as could easily be 
devised by the genius of man, when he expatiated 
abroad on those fields of creation which the eye 
never witnessed, and from which no messenger ever 
came to us with any credible information. Now, 
it was on the former of these two principles that 
Newton clung so determinedly to his Bible, as the 
record of an actual annunciation from God to the 
inhabitants of this world. When he turned his 



THE MODESTY OF TRUE SCIENCE. 



attention to this book, he came to it with a mind 
tutored to the philosophy of facts — and when lie 
looked at its credentials, he saw the stamp and the 
impress of this philosophy on every one of them. 
He saw the fact of Christ being a messenger from 
heaven, in the audible language by which it was 
conveyed from heaven's canopy to human ears. 
He saw the fact of his being an approved ambas- 
sador of God, in those miracles which carried their 
own resistless evidence along with them to human 
eyes. He saw the truth of this whole history 
brought home to his own conviction, by a sound 
and substantial vehicle of human testimony. He 
saw the reality of that supernatural light, which 
inspired the prophecies he himself illustrated, by 
such an agreement with the events of a various 
and distant futurity as could be taken cognizance 
of by human observation. He saw the wisdom of 
Grod pervading the whole substance of the written 
message, in such manifold adaptations to the cir- 
cumstances of man, and to the whole secrecy of 
his thoughts, and his affections, and his spiritual 
wants, and his moral sensibilities, as even in the 
mind of an ordinary and unlettered peasant, can 
be attested by human consciousness. These formed 
the solid materials of the basis on which our experi- 
mental philosopher stood ; and there was nothing 
in the whole compass of his own astronomy, to 
dazzle him away from it ; and he was too well 
aware of the limit between what lie knew, and 
what lie did not know, to be seduced from the 
ground he had taken, by any of those brilliancies, 
which have since led so many of his humbler sue- 



THE MODESTY OF TRUE SCIENCE. 



60 



cessors into the track of Infidelity. He had mea- 
sured the distances of these planets. He had cal- 
culated their periods. He had estimated their 
figures, and their bulk, and their densities, and he 
had subordinated the whole intricacy of their move- 
ments to the simple and sublime agency of one 
commanding principle. But he had too much of 
the ballast of a substantial understanding about 
him, to be thrown afloat by all this success among 
the plausibilities of wanton and unauthorized spe- 
culation. He knew the boundary which hemmed 
him. He knew that he had not thrown one par- 
ticle of light on the moral or religious history of 
these planetary regions. He had not ascertained 
what visits of communication they received from 
the God who upholds them. But he knew that 
the fact of a real visit made to this planet, had 
such evidence to rest upon, that it was not to be 
disposted by any aerial imagination. And when 
I look at the steady and unmoved Christianity of 
this wonderful man, so far from seeing any symp- 
tom of dotage and imbecility, or any forgetfulness 
of those principles on which the fabric of his phi- 
losophy is reared — do I see, that in sitting down 
to the work of a Bible commentator, he hath given 
us their most beautiful and most consistent ex- 
emplification. 

I did not anticipate such a length of time, and 
of illustration, in this stage of my argument. But 
I will not regret it, if I have familiarized the minds 
of any of my readers to the reigning principle of 
this Discourse. We are strongly disposed to think, 
that it is a principle which might be made to apply 



64 



THE MODEST T OF TRUE SCIENCE. 



to every argument of every unbeliever — and so to 
serve not merely as an antidote against the Infi- 
delity of astronomers, but to serve as an antidote 
against all Infidelity. We are all aware of the 
diversity of complexion which Infidelity puts on. 
It looks one thing in the man of science and of 
liberal accomplishment. It looks another thing 
in the refined voluptuary. It looks still another 
thing in the commonplace railer against the arti- 
fices of priestly domination. It looks another thing 
in the dark and unsettled spirit of him, whose every 
reflection is tinctured with gall, and who casts his 
envious and malignant scowl at all that stands 
associated with the established order of society. 
It looks another thing in the prosperous man of 
business, who has neither time nor patience for 
the details of the Christian evidence — but who, 
amid the hurry of his other occupations, has gath- 
ered so many of the lighter petulancies of the in- 
fidel writers, and caught from the perusal of them 
so contemptuous a tone towards the religion of 
the New Testament, as to set him at large from 
all the decencies of religious observation, and to 
give him the disdain of an elevated complacenc}^ 
over all the follies of what he counts a vulgar su- 
perstition. And, lastly , for Infidelity has now got 
down amongst us to the humblest walks of life, 
may it occasionally be seen lowering on the forehead 
of the resolute and hardy artificer, who can lift his 
menacing voice against the priesthood, and, look- 
ing on the Bible as a jugglery of theirs, can bid 
stout defiance to all its denunciations. Now, under 
all these varieties, we think that there might be 



THE MODESTY OF TRUE SCIENCE. 



05 



detected the one and universal principle which we 
have attempted to expose. The something, what- 
ever it is, which has dispossessed all these people 
of their Christianity, exists in their minds, in the 
shape of a position, which they hold to be true, 
but which, by no legitimate evidence, they have 
ever realized — and a position, which lodges within 
them as a wilful fancy or presumption of their own, 
but which could not stand the touchstone of that 
wise and solid principle, in virtue of which the fol- 
lowers of Newton give to observation the prece- 
dence over theory. It is a principle altogether 
worthy of being laboured — as, if carried round in 
faithful and consistent application amongst these 
numerous varieties, it is able to break up all the 
existing Infidelity of the world. 

But there is one other most important conclusion 
to which it carries us. It carries us, with all the 
docility of children, to the Bible ; and puts us down 
into the attitude of an unreserved surrender of 
thought and understanding, to its authoritative in- 
formation. Without the testimony of an authentic 
messenger from Heaven, I know nothing of Heaven's 
counsels. I never heard of any moral telescope that 
can bring to my observation the doings or the de- 
liberations which are taking place in the sanctuary 
of the Eternal. I may put into the registers of my 
belief, all that comes home to me through the senses 
of the outer man, or by the consciousness of the 
inner man. But neither the one nor the other can 
tell me of the purposes of God ; can tell me of the 
transactions or the designs of His sublime monarchy ; 
can tell me of the goings forth of Him who is from 

7 ^ ° E 



66 



THE MODESTY OF TRUE SCIENCE. 



everlasting unto everlasting ; can tell me of the 
march and the movements of that great administra- 
tion which embraces all worlds, and takes into its 
wide and comprehensive survey the mighty roll of 
innumerable ages. It is true that my fancy may 
break its impetuous way into this lofty and in- 
accessible field ; and, through the devices of my heart, 
which are many, the visions of an ever -shifting theo- 
logy may take their alternate sway over me ; but 
the counsel of the Lord, it shall stand. And I repeat 
it, that if true to the leading principle of that 
philosophy which has poured such a flood of light 
over the mysteries of nature, we shall dismiss every 
self-formed conception of our own, and wait, in all 
the humility of conscious ignorance, till the Lord 
himself shall break His silence, and make His coun- 
sel known by an act of communication. And now, 
that a professed communication is before me, and 
that it has all the solidity of the experimental 
evidence on its side, and nothing but the reveries 
of a daring speculation to oppose it, what is the con- 
sistent, what is the rational, what is the philosophical 
use that should be made of this document, but to 
set me down like a school-boy to the work of turn- 
ing its pages, and conning its lessons, and submitting 
the every exercise of my judgment to its information 
and its testimony ? We know that there is a su- 
perficial philosophy which casts the glare of a most 
seducing brilliancy around it ; and spurns the Bible, 
with all the doctrine and nil the piety of the Bible, 
away from it ; and has infused the spirit of Anti- 
christ into many of the literary establishments of 
the age ; but it is not the solid, the profound, the 



THE MODESTY OF TRUE SCIENCE. 



G7 



cautious spirit of that philosophy which has done so 
much to ennoble the modern period of our world ; 
for the more that this spirit is cultivated and under- 
stood, the more will it be found in alliance . with 
that spirit in virtue of which all that exalteth itself 
against the knowledge of God is humbled, and all 
lofty imaginations are cast down, and every thought 
of the heart is brought into the captivity of the 
obedience of Christ. 



68 



THE EXTENT OF THE 



DISCOURSE III. 

ON THE EXTENT OF THE DIVINE CONDESCENSION". 



" Who is like unto the Lord our God, who dwelleth on high, who 
humbleth himself to behold the things that are in heaven, and in 
the earth !" — Psalm cxiii. 5, 6. 

In our last Discourse, we attempted to expose the 
total want of evidence for the assertion of the infidel 
astronomer — and this reduces the whole of our re- 
maining controversy with him to the business of 
arguing against a mere possibility. Still, however, 
the answer is not so complete as it might be, till 
the soundness of the argument be attended to, as 
well as the credibility of the assertion — or, in other 
words, let us admit the assertion, and take a view of 
the reasoning which has been constructed upon it. 

We have already attempted to lay before you the 
wonderful extent of that space, teeming with un- 
numbered worlds, which modern science has brought 
within the circle of its discoveries. We even ven- 
tured to expatiate on those tracts of infinity which 
lie on the other side of all that eye or that telescope 
hath made known to us — to shoot afar into those 
ulterior regions which are beyond the limits of our 
astronomy — to impress you with the rashness of the 
imagination, that the creative energy of God had 
sunk exhausted by the magnitude of its efforts, at 



DIVINE CONDESCENSION. 



69 



that very line, through which the art of man, lavished 
as it has been on the work of perfecting the instru- 
ments of vision, has not yet been able to penetrate ; 
and upon all this we hazarded the assertion, that 
though all these visible heavens were to rush into 
annihilation, and the besom of the Almighty's wrath 
were to sweep from the face of the universe those 
millions and millions more of suns and of systems 
which lie within the grasp of our actual observation — 
that this event, which, to our eye, would leave so 
wide and so dismal a solitude behind it, might be 
nothing in the eye of Him who could take in the 
whole, but the disappearance of a little speck from 
that field of created things, which the hand of His 
omnipotence had thrown around him. 

But to press home the sentiment of the text, it is 
not necessary to stretch the imagination beyond the 
limit of our actual discoveries. It is enough to 
strike our minds with the insignificance of this world, 
and of all wdio inhabit it, to bring it into measure- 
ment with that mighty assemblage of worlds which 
lie open to the eye of man, aided as it has been by 
the inventions of his genius. When we told you 
of the eighty millions of suns, each occupying his 
own independent territory in space, and dispensing 
his own influences over a clusterof tributary worlds ; 
this world could not fail to sink into littleness in the 
eye of him, who looked to all the magnitude and 
variety which are around it. We gave you but a 
feeble image of our comparative insignificance, when 
we said, that the glories of an extended forest would 
suffer no more from the fall of a single leaf, than 
the glories of this extended universe would suffer 



70 



THE EXTENT OF THE 



though the globe we tread upon, " and all that it 
inherits, should dissolve/' And when we lift our 
conceptions to Him who has peopled immensity 
with all these wonders — who sits enthroned on the 
magnificence of His own works, and by one sublime 
idea can embrace the whole extent of that boundless 
amplitude, which He has filled with the trophies of 
His divinity ; we cannot but resign our whole heart 
to the Psalmist's exclamation of "What is man, 
that thou art mindful of him ; or the son of man, 
that thou shouldst deign to visit him I 3 ' 

Now, mark the use to which all this has been 
turned by the genius of Infidelity. Such an humble 
portion of the universe as ours could never have 
been the object of such high and distinguishing at- 
tentions as Christianity has assigned to it. God 
would not have manifested Himself in the flesh for 
the salvation of so paltry a world. The monarch 
of a whole continent would never move from his 
capital, and lay aside the splendour of royalty, and 
subject himself for months, or for years, to perils, 
and poverty, and persecution, and take up his abode 
in some small islet of his dominions, which, though 
swallowed by an earthquake, could not be missed 
amid the glories of so wide an empire ; and all this 
to regain the lost affections of a few families upon 
its surface. And neither would the eternal Son of 
God — He who is revealed to us as having made all 
worlds, and as holding an empire, amid the splen- 
dours of which the globe that we inherit is shaded 
in insignificance ; neither would He strip Himself 
of the glory He had with the Father before the world 
was, and light on this lower scene for the purpose 



DIVINE CONDESCENSION. 



71 



imputed to Him in the New Testament. Impossible, 
that the concerns of this puny ball, which floats its 
little round among an infinity of larger worlds, should 
be of such mighty account in the plans of the Eternal, 
or should have given birth in heaven to so wonder- 
ful a movement, as the Son of Grod putting on the 
form of our degraded species, and sojourning amongst 
us, and sharing in all our infirmities, and crowning 
the whole scene of humiliation by the disgrace and 
the agonies of a cruel martyrdom. 

This has been started as a difficulty in the way of 
the Christian Revelation ; and it is the boast of 
many of our philosophical Infidels, that, by the light 
of modern discovery, the light of the New Testament 
is eclipsed and overborne ; and the mischief is not 
confined to philosophers, for the argument has got 
into other hands, and the popular illustrations that 
are now given to the sublimest truths of science, 
have widely disseminated all the Deism that has 
been grafted upon it ; and the high tone of a decided 
contempt for the Gospel is now associated with the 
flippancy of superficial acquirements ; and while 
the venerable Newton, whose genius threw open 
those mighty fields of contemplation, found a fit ex- 
ercise for his powers in the interpretation of the 
Bible, there are thousands and tens of thousands, 
who, though walking in the light which he holds out 
to them, are seduced by a complacency which he 
never felt, and inflated by a pride which never en- 
tered into his pious and philosophical bosom, and 
whose only notice of the Bible is to depreciate, and 
to deride, and to disown it. 

Before entering into what we conceive to be the 



72 



THE EXTENT OF THE 



right answer to this objection, let us previously ob- 
serve, that it goes to strip the Deity of an attribute 
which forms a wonderful addition to the glories of 
his incomprehensible character. It is indeed a 
mighty evidence of the strength of His arm, that so 
many millions of worlds are suspended on it ; but 
it would surely make the high attribute of His power 
more illustrious, if, while it expatiatedat large among 
the suns and the systems of astronomy, it could, at 
the very same instant, be impressing a movement 
and a direction on all the minuter wheels of that 
machinery which is working incessantly around us. 
It forms a noble demonstration of His wisdom, that 
He gives unremitting operation to those laws which 
uphold the stability of this great universe ; but it 
would go to heighten that wisdom inconceivably, if, 
while equal to the magnificent task of maintaining 
the order and harmony of the spheres, it was la- 
vishing its inexhaustible resources on the beauties, 
and varieties, and arrangements, of every one scene, 
however humble, of everyone field, however narrow, 
of the creation He had formed. It is a cheering 
evidence of the delight He takes in communicating 
happiness, that the whole of immensity should be so 
strewed with the habitations of life and of intelli- 
gence ; but it would surely bring home the evidence 
with a nearer and a more affecting impression to 
every bosom, did we know, that at the very time His 
benignant regard took in the mighty circle of created 
beings, there was not a single family overlooked by 
Him, and that every individual in every corner of 
His dominions was as effectually scon to, as if the 
object of an exclusive and undivided care. It is our 



DIVINE CONDESCENSION. 



73 



imperfection, that we cannot give our attention to 
more than one object at one and the same instant 
of time ; but surely it would elevate our every idea 
of the perfections of God, did we know, that while 
His comprehensive mind could grasp the whole am- 
plitude of nature, to the very outermost of its 
boundaries, He had an attentive eye fastened on the 
very humblest of its objects, and pondered every 
thought of my heart, and noticed every footstep of 
my goings, and treasured up in His remembrance 
every turn and every movement of my history. 

And, lastly, to apply this train of sentiment to 
the matter before us, let us suppose that one among 
the countless myriads of worlds should be visited 
by a moral pestilence, which spread through all its 
people, and brought them under the doom of a law 
whose sanctions were unrelenting and immutable ; 
it were no disparagement to God, should He, by an 
act of righteous indignation, sweep this offence away 
from the universe which it deformed — nor should 
we wonder, though, among the multitude of other 
worlds, from which the ear of the Almighty was re- 
galed with the songs of praise, and the incense of a 
pure adoration ascended to His throne, He should 
leave the strayed and solitary world to perish in the 
guilt of its rebellion. But, would it not throw the 
softening of a most exquisite tenderness over the 
character of God, should we see Him putting forth 
His every expedient to reclaim to Himself those 
children who had wandered away from Him — and, 
few as they were when compared with the host of 
His obedient worshippers, would it not just impart 
to his attribute of compassion the infinity of the 



74 



THE EXTENT OF THE 



Godhead, that rather than lose the single world 
which had turned to its own way, He should send 
the messengers of peace to woo and to welcome it 
back again ; and, if justice demanded so mighty a 
sacrifice, and the law behoved to be so magnified and 
made honourable, would it not throw a moral sublime 
over the goodness of the Deity, should He lay upon 
His own Son the burden of its atonement, that He 
might again smile upon the world, and hold out the 
sceptre of invitation to all its families ? 

We avow it, therefore, that this infidel argument 
goes to expunge a perfection from the character of 
God. The more we know of the extent of nature, 
should not we have the loftier conception of Him 
who sits in high authority over the concerns of so 
wide a universe ? But is it not adding to the bright 
catalogue of his other attributes, to say, that while 
magnitude does not overpower Him, minuteness can- 
not escape Him, and variety cannot bewilder Him, 
and that, at the very time while the mind of the 
Deity is abroad over the whole vastness of creation, 
there is not one particle of matter, there is not one 
individual principle of rational or of animal exist- 
ence, there is not one single world in that expanse 
which teems with them, that His eye does not dis- 
cern as constantly, and His hand does not guide as 
unerringly, and His Spirit does not watch and care 
for as vigilantly, as if it formed the one and exclu- 
sive object of His attention? 

The thing is inconceivable to us, whose minds are 
so easily distracted by a number of objects, and this 
is the secret principle of the whole Infidelity I am 
now alluding to. To bring God to the level of our 



DIVINE CONDESCENSION. 



75 



own comprehension, we would clothe him in the im- 
potency of a man. We would transfer to his won- 
derful mind all the imperfection of our own faculties. 
While we are taught by astronomy, that He has 
millions of worlds to look after, and thus add in one 
direction to the glories of His character ; we take 
away from them in another, by saying, that each of 
these worlds must be looked after imperfectly. The 
use that we make of a discovery, which should 
heighten our every conception of God, and humble 
us into the sentiment, that a Being of such mysteri- 
ous elevation is to us unfathomable, is to sit in judg- 
ment over Him, and to pronounce such a judgment 
as degrades Him, and keeps Him down to the stand- 
ard of our own paltry imagination ! We are intro- 
duced by modern science to a multitude of other suns 
and of other systems ; and the perverse interpretation 
we put upon the fact, that God can diffuse the bene- 
fits of His power and of His goodness over such a 
variety of worlds, is, that He cannot, or will not, 
bestow so much goodness on one of those worlds, as 
a professed revelation from Heaven has announced 
to us. While we enlarge the provinces of His em- 
pire, we tarnish all the glory of this enlargement, by 
saying, He has so much to care for, that the care of 
every one province must be less complete, and less 
vigilant, and less effectual, than it would otherwise 
have been. By the discoveries of modern science, 
we multiply the places of the creation ; but along 
with this, we would impair the attribute of His eye 
being in every place to behold the evil and the good ; 
and thus, while we magnify one of His perfections, 
we do it at the expense of another ; and, to bring 



76 



THE EXTENT OF THE 



Him within the grasp of our feeble capacity, we 
would deface one of the glories of that character, 
which it is our part to adore, as higher than all 
thought, and as greater than all comprehension. 

The objection we are discussing, I shall state again 
in a single sentence. Since astronomy has unfold- 
ed to us such a number of worlds, it is not likely 
that God would pay so much attention to this one 
world, and set up such wonderful provisions for its 
benefit, as are announced to us in the Christian 
Revelation. This objection will have received its 
answer, if we can meet it by the following position : 
— that God, in addition to the bare faculty of dwell- 
ing on a multiplicity of objects at one and the same 
time, has this faculty in such wonderful perfection, 
that He can attend as fully, and provide as richly, 
and manifest all His attributes as illustriously, on 
every one of these objects, as if the rest had no exist- 
ence, and no place whatever in His government or 
in His thoughts. 

For the evidence of this position, we appeal, in the 
first place, to the personal history of each individual 
among you. Only grant us, that God never loses 
sight of any one thing He has created, and that no 
created thing can continue either to be, or to act 
independently of Him ; and then, even upon the face 
of this world, humble as it is on the great scale of 
astronomy, how widely diversified, and how multi- 
plied into many thousand distinct exercises, is the 
attention of God ! His eye is upon every hour of 
my existence. His spirit is intimately present with 
every thought of my heart. His inspiration gives 
birth to every purpose within me. His hand im- 



DIVINE CONDESCENSION. 



77 



presses a direction on every footstep of my goings. 
Every breath I inhale, is drawn by an energy which 
God deals out to me. This body, which, upon the 
slightest derangement, would become the prey of 
death, or of woful suffering, is now at ease, because 
He at this moment is warding off from me a thou- 
sand dangers, and upholding the thousand move- 
ments of its complex and delicate machinery. His 
presiding influence keeps by me through the whole 
current of my restless and everchanging history. 
"When I walk by the wayside, He is along with me. 
"When I enter into company, amid all my forgetful- 
ness of Him, He never forgets me. In the silent 
watches of the night when my eyelids have closed, 
and my spirit has sunk into unconsciousness, the 
observant eye of Him who never slumbers is upon 
me. I cannot fly from His presence. Go where I 
will, He tends me, and watches me, and cares for 
me ; and the same Being who is now at work in the 
remotest domains of Nature and of Providence, is also 
at my right hand to eke out to me every moment of 
my being, and to uphold me in the exercise of all 
my feelings, and of all my faculties. 

Now, what God is doing with me, He is doing 
with every distinct individual of this world's popu- 
lation. The intimacy of His presence, and atten- 
tion, and care, reaches to one and to all of them. 
With a mind unburdened by the vastness of all its 
other concerns, He can prosecute, without distrac- 
tion, the government and guardianship of every 
one son and daughter of the species. And is it 
for us in the face of all this experience, ungrate- 
fully to draw a limit around the perfections of God 



78 



THE EXTENT OF THE 



— to aver, that the multitude of other worlds has 
withdrawn any portion of His benevolence from 
the one we occupy — or that He, whose eye is upon 
every separate family of the earth, would not lavish 
all the riches of His unsearchable attributes on 
some high plan of pardon and immortality in behaf 
of its countless generations ? 

But, secondly, were the mind of God so fatigued, 
and so occupied with the care of other worlds, as 
the objection presumes Him to be, should we not 
see some traces of neglect or of carelessness in 
His management of ours ? Should we not behold, 
in many a field of observation, the evidence of its 
master being over-crowded with the variety of His 
other engagements ? A man oppressed by a mul- 
titude of business, would simplify and reduce the 
work of any new concern that was devolved upon 
him. Now, point out a single mark of God being 
thus oppressed. Astronomy has laid open to us 
so many realms of creation, which were before un- 
heard of, that the world we inhabit shrinks into 
one remote and solitary province of His wide 
monarchy. Tell us then, if, in any one field of 
this province which man has access to, you witness 
a single indication of God sparing Himself — of 
God reduced to languor by the weight of His 
other employments — of God sinking under the 
burden of that vast superintendence which lies 
upon him — of God being exhausted, as one of our- 
selves would be, by any number of concerns, how- 
ever great, by any variety of them, however mani- 
fold ; and do you not perceive, in that mighty 
profusion of wisdom and of goodness, which is 



DIVINE CONDESCENSION. 



79 



scattered everywhere around us, that the thoughts 
of this unsearchable Being are not as our thoughts, 
nor his ways as our ways ? 

My time does not suffer me to dwell on this 
topic, because, before I conclude, I must hasten 
to another illustration. But when I look abroad 
on the wondrous scene that is immediately before 
me — and see that in every direction it is a scene 
of the most various and unwearied activity — and 
expatiate on all the beauties of that garniture by 
which it is adorned, and on all the prints of design 
and of benevolence which abound in it — and think 
that the same God who holds the universe with its 
every system in the hollow of His hand, pencils 
every flower, and gives nourishment to every blade 
of grass, and actuates the movements of every liv- 
ing thing, and is not disabled, by the weight of 
His other cares, from enriching the humble depart- 
ment of nature I occupy with charms and accom- 
modations of the most unbounded variety — then, 
surely if a message, bearing every mark of authen- 
ticity, should profess to come to me from God, 
and inform me of His mighty doings for the happi- 
ness of our species, it is not for me, in the face of 
all this evidence, to reject it as a tale of imposture, 
because astronomers have told me that He has so 
many other worlds and other orders of beings to 
attend to, — and, when I think that it were a depo- 
sition of Him from His supremacy over the crea- 
tures He has formed, should a single sparrow fall 
to the ground without His appointment, then let 
science and sophistry try to cheat me of my com- 
fort as they may — I will not let go the anchor of 



80 



THE EXTENT OF THE 



my confidence in God — I will not be afraid, for I 

am of more value than many sparrows. 

But, thirdly, it was the telescope, that, by pier- 
cing the obscurity which lies between us and distant 
worlds, put Infidelity in possession of the argument 
against which we are now contending. But, about 
the time of its invention, another instrument was 
formed which laid open a scene no less wonderful, 
and rewarded the inquisitive spirit of man with a 
discovery which serves to neutralize the whole of 
this argument. This was the microscope. The one 
led me to see a system in every star. The other 
leads me to see a world in every atom. The one 
taught me, that this mighty globe, with the whole 
burden of its people and of its countries, is but a 
grain of sand on the high field of immensity. The 
other teaches me, that every grain of sand may 
harbour within it the tribes and the families of a 
busy population. The one told me of the insigni- 
ficance of the world I tread upon. The other re- 
deems it from all its insignificance ; for it tells me 
that in the leaves of every forest, and in the flowers 
of every garden, and in the waters of every rivulet, 
there are worlds teeming with life, and numberless 
as are the glories of the firmament. The one has 
suggested to me, that beyond and above all that 
is visible to man, there may lie fields of creation 
which sweep immeasurably along, and carry the 
impress of the Almighty's hand to the remotest 
scenes of the universe. The other suggests to me, 
that within and beneath all that minuteness which 
the aided eye of man lias been able to explore, 
there may lie a region of invisibles ; and that, could 



DIVINE CONDESCENSION. 



81 



we draw aside the mysterious curtain which shrouds 
it from our senses, we might there see a theatre 
of as many wonders as astronomy has unfolded, a 
universe within the compass of a point so small, 
as to elude all the powers of the microscope, but 
where the wonder-working God finds room for 
the exercise of all His attributes, where He can 
raise another mechanism of worlds, and fill and 
animate them all with the evidences of His glory. 

Now, mark how all this may be made to meet the 
argument of our infidel astronomers. By the tele- 
scope, they have discovered that no magnitude, how- 
ever vast, is beyond the grasp of the Divinity. But 
by the microscope, we have also discovered that no 
minuteness, however shrunk from the notice of the 
human eye, is beneath the condescension of His re- 
gard. Every addition to the powers of the one in- 
strument, extends the limit of His visible dominions. 
But by every addition to the powers of the other in- 
strument, we see each part of them more crowded 
than before with the wonders of His unwearying 
hand. The one is constantly widening the circle of 
His territory. The other is as constantly filling up 
its separate portions w T ith all that is rich and vari- 
ous and exquisite. In a word, by the one I am told 
that the Almighty is now at work in regions more 
distant than geometry has ever measured, and among 
worlds more manifold than numbers have ever 
reached. But, by the other, I am also told, that 
with a mind to comprehend the whole, in the vast 
compass of its generality, He has also a mind to 
concentrate a close and a separate attention on each 
and on all of its particulars ; and that the same 
7 p 



82 



THE EXTENT OF THE 



God, who sends forth an upholding influence among 
the orbs and the movements of astronomy, can fill 
the recesses of every single atom with the intimacy 
of His presence, and travel, in all the greatness of 
His unimpaired attributes, upon every one spot 
and corner of the universe He has formed. They, 
therefore, who think that God will not put forth 
such a power, and such a goodness, and such a con- 
descension in behalf of this world, as are ascribed to 
Him in the New Testament, because He has so 
many other w r orlds to attend to, think of Him as a 
man. They confine their view to the informations 
of the telescope, and forget altogether the informa- 
tions of the other instrument. They only find room 
in their minds for His one attribute of a large and 
general superintendence ; and keep out of their re- 
membrance the equally impressive proofs we have for 
His other attribute, of a minute and multiplied 
attention to all that diversity of operations, where 
it is He that worketh all in all. And when I think 
that as one of the instruments of philosophy has 
heightened our every impression of the first of 
these attributes, so another instrument has no less 
heightened our impression of the second of them — 
then I can no longer resist the conclusion, that it 
would be a transgression of sound argument, as well 
as a daring of impiety, to draw a limit around the 
doings of this unsearchable God — and should a pro- 
fessed revelation from heaven tell mc of an act of 
condescension in behalf of some separate world, so 
wonderful that angels desired to look into it, and 
the Eternal Son had to move from His scat of glory 
to carry it into accomplishment, all I ask is the cvi- 



DIVINE CONDESCENSION. 



dence of such a revelation ; for, let it tell me as 
much as it may of God letting himself down for the 
benefit of one single province of His dominions, this 
is no more than what I see lying scattered, in 
numberless examples before me — and running 
through the whole line of my recollections — and 
meeting me in every walk of observation to which I 
can betake myself ; and, now that the microscope 
has unveiled the wonders of another region, I see 
strewed around me, with a profusion which baffles 
my every attempt to comprehend it, the evidence 
that there is no one portion of the universe of God 
too minute for His notice, nor too humble for the 
visitations of His care. 

As the end of all these illustrations, let me bestow 
a single paragraph on what I conceive to be the 
precise state of this argument. 

It is a wonderful thing that God should be so 
unencumbered by the concerns of a whole universe, 
that He can give a constant attention to every 
moment of every individual in this world's popu- 
lation. But, wonderful as it is, you do not hesitate 
to admit it as true, on the evidence of your own re- 
collections. It is a wonderful thing that He, whose 
eye is at every instant on so many worlds, should 
have peopled the world we inhabit with all the traces 
of the varied design and benevolence which abound 
in it. But great as the wonder is, you do not allow 
so much as the shadow of improbability to darken 
it, for its reality is what you actually witness, and 
you never think of questioning the evidence of ob- 
servation. It is wonderful, it is passing wonderful, 
that the same God, whose presence is diffused 



84 



THE EXTENT OF THE 



through immensity, and who spreads the ample 
canopy of His administration over all its dwelling 
places, should, with an energy as fresh and as unex- 
pended, as if He had only begun the work of creation, 
turn Him to the neighbourhood around us, and 
lavish on its every hand-breadth all the exuberance 
of His goodness, and crowd it with the many thou- 
sand varieties of conscious existence. But, be the 
wonder incomprehensible as it m&y, you do not 
suffer in your mind the burden of a single doubt to 
lie upon it, because you do not, question the report 
of the microscope. You do not refuse its informa- 
tion, nor turn away from it as an incompetent channel 
of evidence. But to bring it still nearer to the 
point at issue, there are many who never looked 
through a microscope, but who rest an implicit faith 
in all its revelations ; and upon what evidence, I 
would ask ? Upon the evidence of testimony — upon 
the credit they give to the authors of the books they 
have read, and the belief they put in the record of 
their observations. Now, at this point I make my 
stand. It is wonderful that God should be so in- 
terested in the redemption of a single world, as to 
send forth his well-beloved Son upon the errand ; 
and He, to accomplish it, should, mighty to save, 
put forth all His strength, and travail in the great- 
ness of it. But such wonders as these have already 
multiplied upon you ; and when evidence is given 
of their truth, you have resigned your every judg- 
ment of the unsearchable God, and rested in the 
faith of them. I demand, in the name of sound and 
consistent philosophy, that you do the same in the 
matter before us — and take it up as a question of 



DIVINE CONDESCENSION. 



85 



evidence — and examine that medium of testimony 
through which the miracles and informations of the 
Gospel have come to your door — and go not to admit 
as argument here, what would not be admitted as 
argument in any of the analogies of nature and ob- 
servation — and take along with you in this field of in- 
quiry, a lesson which you should have learned upon 
other fields — even the depth of the riches both of the 
wisdom and the knowledge of God, that His judgments 
are unsearchable, and His ways are past finding out. 

I do not enter at all into the positive evidence for 
the truth of the Christian Revelation, my single aim 
at present being to dispose of one of the objections 
which is conceived to stand in the way of it. Let 
me suppose then, that this is done to the satisfaction 
of a philosophical inquirer ; and that the evidence 
is sustained ; and that the same mind that is 
familiarized to all the sublimities of natural science, 
and has been in the habit of contemplating God in 
association with all the magnificence which is around 
him, shall be brought to submit its thoughts to the 
captivity of the doctrine of Christ. Oh ! with what 
veneration, and gratitude, and wonder, should he 
look on the descent of Him into this lower world, 
who made all these things, and without whom was 
not any thing made that was made. What a 
grandeur does it throw over every step in the re- 
demption of a fallen world, to think of its being done 
by Him who unrobed Him of the glories of so wide 
a monarchy, and came to this humblest of its pro- 
vinces, in the disguise of a servant, and took upon 
Him the form of our degraded species, and let Him- 
self down to sorrows and to sufferings and to death 



THE EXTENT OF THE 



for us ! In this love of an expiring Saviour to those 
for whom in agony He poured out His soul, there is 
a height, and a depth, and a length, and a breadth, 
more than I can comprehend ; and let me never 
from this moment neglect so great a salvation, or 
lose my hold of an atonement, made sure by Him 
who cried that it was finished, and brought in an 
everlasting righteousness. It was not the visit of 
an empty parade that He made to us. It was for 
the accomplishment of some substantial purpose ; 
and if that purpose is announced, and stated to 
consist in His dying the just for the unjust, that He 
might bring us unto God, let us never doubt of our 
acceptance in that way of communication with our 
Father in heaven, which He hath opened and made 
known to us. In taking to that way, let us follow 
His every direction, with that humility which a sense 
of all this wonderful condescension is fitted to inspire. 
Let us forsake all that He bids us forsake. Let 
us do all that He bids us do. Let us give ourselves 
up to His guidance with the docility of children over- 
powered by a kindness that we never merited, and 
a love that is unquelled by all the perverseness 
and all the ingratitude of our stubborn nature — for 
what shall we render unto Him for such mysterious 
benefits — to him who has thus been mindful of us — 
to him who thus has deigned to visit us? 

But the whole of this argument is not yet exhaust- 
ed. We have scarcely entered on the defence that 
is commonly made against the plea which Infidelity 
rests on the wonderful extent of the universe of God, 
and the insignificancy of our assigned portion of it. 
'Hie way in which we have attempted to dispose of 



DIVINE CONDESCENSION. 



87 



this plea, is by insisting on the evidence that is every- 
where around ns ? of God combining, with the large- 
ness of a vast and mighty superintendence, which 
reaches the outskirts of creation, and spreads over- 
all its amplitudes — the faculty of bestowing as much 
attention, and exercising as complete and manifold 
a wisdom, and lavishing as profuse and inexhaustible 
a goodness, on each of its humblest departments, as 
if it formed the whole extent of His territory. 

In the whole of this argument we have looked 
upon the earth as isolated from the rest of the uni- 
verse altogether. But, according to the way in which 
the astronomical objection is commonly met, the 
earth is not viewed as in a state of detachment from 
the other worlds, and the other orders of being which 
God has called into existence. It is looked upon 
as the member of a more extended system. It is 
associated with the magnificence of a moral empire, 
as wide as the kingdom of nature. It is not merely 
asserted, what in our last Discourse has been already 
done, that for any thing we can know by reason, the 
plan of redemption may have its influences and its 
bearings on those creatures of God who people other 
regions, and occupy other fields in the immensity 
of His dominions ; that to argue, therefore, on this 
plan being instituted for the single benefit of the 
world we live in, and of the species to which we be- 
long, is a mere presumption of the Infidel himself ; 
and that the objection he rears on it must fall to the 
ground, when the vanity of the presumption is ex- 
posed. The Christian apologist thinks he can go 
farther than this — that he can not merely expose 
the utter baselessness of the Infidel assertion, but 



88 



THE EXTENT OF THE 



that he has positive ground for erecting an opposite 
and a confronting assertion in its place — and that, 
after having neutralized their position, by showing 
the entire absence of all observation in its behalf, he 
can pass on to the distinct and affirmative testimony 
of the Bible. 

We do think that this lays open a very interesting 
tract, not of wild and fanciful, but of most legitimate 
and sober-minded speculation. And anxious as we 
are to put every thing that bears upon the Christian 
argument into all its lights ; and fearless as we feel 
for the result of a most thorough sifting of it ; and 
thinking as we do think it, the foulest scorn that any 
pigmy philosopher of the day should mince his am- 
biguous scepticism to a set of giddy and ignorant 
admirers, or that a half-learned and superficial public 
should associate with the Christian priesthood, the 
blindness and the bigotry of a sinking cause — with 
these feelings we are not disposed to shun a single 
question that may be started on the subject of the 
Christian evidences. There is not one of its parts 
or bearings which needs the shelter of a disguise 
thrown over it. Let the priests of another faith ply 
their prudential expedients, and look so wise and so 
wary in the execution of them. But Christianity 
stands in a higher and a firmer attitude. The de- 
fensive armour of a shrinking or timid policy does 
not suit her. Hers is the naked majesty of truth ; 
and with all the grandeur of age, but with none of 
its infirmities, has she come down to us, and gather- 
ed new strength from the battles she has won in the 
many controversies of many generations. "With such 
a religion as this there is nothing to hide. All should 



DIVINE CONDESCENSION. 



89 



be above boards. And the broadest light of day 
should be made fully and freely to circulate through- 
out all her secrecies. But secrets she has none. To 
her belong the frankness and the simplicity of con- 
scious greatness ; and whether she has to contend 
with the pride of philosophy, or stand in fronted op- 
position to the prejudices of the multitude, she does 
it upon her own strength, and spurns all the props 
and all the auxiliaries of superstition away from her. 



90 



KNOWLEDGE OF MA^'s MORAL HISTORY 



DISCOURSE IV. 

ON THE KNOWLEDGE OF MAN'S MORAL HISTORY IN THE 
DISTANT PLACES OF CREATION. 



" Which things the angels desire to look into." — 1 Peter i. 12. 

There is a limit, across which man cannot carry 
any one of his perceptions, and from the ulterior of 
which he cannot gather a single observation to guide 
or to inform him. While he keeps by the objects 
which are near, he can get the knowledge of them 
conveyed to his mind through the ministry of seve- 
ral of the senses. He can feel a substance that is 
within reach of his hand. He can smell a flower 
that is presented to him. He can taste the food that 
is before him. He can hear a sound of certain pitch 
and intensity ; and, so much does this sense of hear- 
ing widen his intercourse with external nature, that, 
from the distance of miles, it can bring him in an 
occasional intimation. 

But of all the tracts of conveyance which God has 
been pleased to open up between the mind of man, 
and the theatre by which he is surrounded, there is 
none by which he so multiplies his acquaintance with 
the rich and the varied creation on every side of him, 
as by the organ of the eye. It is this which gives to 
man his loftiest command over the scenery of nature. 



m THE DISTANT PLACES OF CREATION. 



91 



It is this by which so broad a range of observation 
is submitted to him. It is this which enables him, 
by the act of a single moment, to send an exploring 
look over the surface of an ample territory, to crowd 
his mind with the whole assembly of its objects, and 
to fill his vision with those countless hues which di- 
versify and adorn it. It is this which carries him 
abroad over all that is sublime in the immensity of 
distance ; which sets him as it were on an elevated 
platform, from whence he may cast a surveying 
glance over the arena of innumerable worlds ; which 
spreads before hini so mighty a province of contem- 
plation, that the earth he inhabits only appears to 
furnish him with the pedestal on which he may stand, 
and from which he may descry the wonders of all 
that magnificence which the Divinity has poured so 
abundantly around him. It is by the narrow outlet 
of the eye that the mind of man takes its excursive 
flight over those golden tracks, where, in all the ex- 
haustlessness of creative wealth, lie scattered the 
suns and the systems of astronomy. But how good 
a thing it is, and how becoming well, for the philo- 
sopher to be humble even amid the proudest march 
of human discovery, and the sublimest triumphs of 
the human understanding, when he thinks of that 
unsealed barrier, beyond which no power, either of 
eye or of telescope, shall ever carry him ; when he 
thinks that, on the other side of it, there is a height, 
and a depth, and a length, and a breadth, to which 
the whole of this concave and visible firmament dwin- 
dles into the insignificancy of an atom — and above 
all, how ready should he be to cast every lofty imagi- 
nation away from him, when he thinks of the God 



92 KNOWLEDGE OF MAN'S MORAL HISTORY 

who, on the simple foundation of His word, has rear- 
ed the whole of this stately architecture, and, by the 
force of His preserving hand, continues to uphold it ; 
and should the word again come out from Him, that 
this earth shall pass away, and a portion of the hea- 
vens which are around it, shall fall back into the 
annihilation from which he at first summoned them 
— what an impressive rebuke does it bring on the 
swelling vanity of science, to think that the whole 
field of its most ambitious enterprises may be swept 
away altogether, and still there remain before the 
eye of Him who sitteth on the throne, an untravelled 
immensity, which He hath filled with innumerable 
splendours, and over the whole face of which he hatli 
inscribed the evidence of His high attributes, in all 
their might, and in all their manifestation. 

But man has a great deal more to keep him 
humble of his understanding, than a mere sense of 
that boundary which skirts and which terminates 
the material field of his contemplations. He ought 
also to feel, how, within that boundary, the vast 
majority of things is mysterious and unknown to 
him — that even in the inner chamber of his own 
consciousness, where so much lies hidden from the 
observation of others, there is also to himself a little 
world of incomprehensibles ; that if stepping beyond 
the limits of this familiar home, he look no farther 
than to the members of his family, there is much 
in the cast and the colour of every mind that is 
above his powers of divination ; that in proportion as 
he recedes from the centre of his own personal ex- 
perience, there is a cloud of ignorance and secrecy 
which spreads, and thickens, and throws a deep and 



IN THE DISTANT PLACES OF CREATION. 



98 



impenetrable veil over the intricacies of every one 
department of human contemplation ; that of all 
around him, his knowledge is naked and superficial, 
and confined to a few of those more conspicuous 
lineaments which strike upon his senses ; that the 
whole face, both of nature and of society, presents 
him with questions which he cannot unriddle, and 
tells him that beneath the surface of all that the 
eye can rest upon, there lies the profoundness of a 
most unsearchable latency ; and should he in some 
lofty enterprise of thought, leave this world, and 
shoot afar into those tracks of speculation which 
astronomy has opened, should he, bafHed by the 
mysteries which beset his footsteps upon earth, 
attempt an ambitious flight towards the mysteries 
of heaven — let him go, but let the justness of a 
pious and philosophical modesty go along with him, 
— let him forget not, that from the moment his 
mind has taken its ascending way for a few little 
miles above the world he treads upon, his every sense 
abandons him but one — that number, and motion, 
and magnitude, and figure, make up all the bare- 
ness of its elementary informations — that these orbs 
have sent him scarce another message than told by 
their feeble glimmering upon his eye, the simple 
fact of their existence — that he sees not the land- 
scape of other worlds — that he knows not the moral 
system of any one of them — nor athwart the long 
and trackless vacancy which lies between, does there 
fall upon his listening ear the hum of their mighty 
populations. 

But the knowledge which he cannot fetch up 
himself from the obscurity of this wondrous but un- 



94 



KNOWLEDGE OF Man's MORAL HISTORY 



travelled scene, by the exercise of any one of his 
own senses, might be fetched to him by the testi- 
mony of a competent messenger. Conceive a native 
of one of these planetary mansions to light upon 
our world, and all we should require would be, to 
be satisfied of his credentials, that we may give our 
faith to every point of information he had to offer 
us. With the solitary exception of what we have 
been enabled to gather by the instruments of astro- 
nomy, there is not one of his communications about 
the place he came from, on which we possess any 
means at all of confronting him ; and therefore, 
could he only appear before us invested with the 
characters of truth, we should never think of any 
thing else than taking up the whole matter of his 
testimony just as he brought it to us. 

It were well had a sound philosophy schooled its 
professing disciples to the same kind of acquiescence 
in another message, which has actually come to the 
world ; and has told us of matters still more remote 
from every power of unaided observation ; and has 
been sent from a more sublime and mysterious 
distance, even from that God of whom it is said that 
" clouds and darkness are the habitation of his 
throne \ 3> and treating of a theme so lofty and so 
inaccessible, as the counsels of that Eternal Spirit, 
" whose goings forth are of old, even from ever- 
lasting/' challenges of man that he should submit 
his every thought to the authority of this high com- 
munication. Oh ! had the philosophers of the day 
known as well as their great master, how to draw 
the vigorous land-mark which verges the field of 
legitimate discovery, they should have seen when it 



IN THE DISTANT PLACES OF CREATION. 



9,5 



is that philosophy becomes vain, and science is 
falsely so called ; and how it is, that when philo- 
sophy is true to her principles, she shuts up her 
faithful votary to the Bible, and makes him willing 
to count all but loss, for the knowledge of Jesus 
Christ, and of Him crucified. 

But let it be well observed, that the object of this 
message is not to convey information to us about 
the state of these planetary regions. This is not the 
matter with which it is fraught. It is a message 
from the throne of God to this rebellious province 
of His dominions ; and the purpose of it is, to reveal 
the fearful extent of our guilt and of our danger, 
and to lay before us the overtures of reconciliation. 
Were a similar message sent from the metropolis of 
a mighty empire to one of its remote and revo- 
lutionary districts, we should not look to it for much 
information about the state or economy of the in- 
termediate provinces. This were a departure from 
the topic on hand — though still there may chance to 
be some incidental allusions to the extent and re- 
sources of the whole monarchy, to the existence of a 
similar spirit of rebellion in other quarters of the 
land, or to the general principle of loyalty by which 
it was pervaded. Some casual references of this 
kind may be inserted in such a proclamation, or 
they may not — and it is with this precise feeling of 
ambiguity that we open the record of that embass\ r 
which has been sent us from heaven, to see if we can 
gather any thing there, about other places of the 
creation, to meet the objections of the infidel as- 
tronomer. But, while we pursue this object, let us 
be careful not to push the speculation beyond the 



90 



KNOWLEDGE OF MAN'S MORAL HISTORY 



limits of the written testimony; let us keep a just 
and a steady eye on the actual boundary of our 
knowledge, that, throughout every distinct step of 
our argument, we might preserve that chaste and 
unambitious spirit, which characterizes the philo- 
sophy of him who explored these distant heavens, 
and, by the force of his genius, unravelled the 
secret of that wondrous mechanism which upholds 
them. 

The informations of the Bible upon this subject, 
are of two sorts — that from which we confidently 
gather the fact, that the history of the redemption 
of our species is known in other and distant places 
of the creation — and that from which we indistinctly 
guess at the fact, that the redemption itself may 
stretch beyond the limits of the world we occupy. 

And here it may shortly be adverted to, that, 
though we know little or nothing of the moral and 
theological economy of the other planets, we are 
not to infer, that the beings who occupy these widely 
extended regions, even though not higher than we 
in the scale of understanding, know little of ours. 
Our first parents, ere they committed that act by 
which they brought themselves and their posterity 
into the need of redemption, had frequent and fami- 
liar intercourse with God. He walked with them 
in the garden of paradise, and there did angels hold 
their habitual converse ; and, should the same un- 
blotted innocence which charmed and attracted 
these superior beings to the haunts of Eden, be per- 
petuated in every planet but our own, then might 
each of them be the scene of high and heavenly 
communications, and an open way for the messengers 



IN DISTANT PLACES OF CREATION. 



07 



of God be kept up with them all, and their inhabi- 
tants be admitted to a share in the themes and con- 
templations of angels, and have their spirits exer- 
cised on those things, of which we are told that the 
♦angels desired to look into them ; and thus, as we 
talk of the public mind of a city, or the public mind 
of an empire — by the well-frequented avenues of a 
free and ready circulation, a public mind might be 
formed throughout the whole extent of God s sinless 
and intelligent creation— and just as we often read 
of the eyes of all Europe being turned to the one 
spot where some affair of eventful importance is 
going on, there might be the eyes of a whole uni- 
verse turned to the one world, where rebellion 
against the Majesty of heaven had planted its 
standard ; and for the readmission of which within 
the circle of His fellowship, God, whose justice was 
inflexible, but whose mercy He had, by some plan 
of mysterious wisdom, made to rejoice over it, was 
putting forth all the might, and travailing in all 
the greatness of the attributes which belonged to 
Him. 

But, for the full understanding of this argument 
it must be remarked, that while in our exiled habi- 
tation, where all is darkness, and rebellion, and 
enmity, the creature engrosses every heart, and our 
affections, when they shift at all, only wander from 
one fleeting vanity to another, it is not so in the 
habitations of the unfallen. There, every desire 
and every movement is subordinated to God. He is 
seen in all that is formed, and in all that is spread 
around them— and, amid the fulness of that delight 
with which they expatiate over the good and the 



98 



KNOWLEDGE OF MAN*S MORAL HISTORY 



fair of this wondrous universe, the animating charm 
which pervades their every contemplation, is, that 
they behold, on each visible thing, the impress of the 
mind that conceived, and of the hand that made 
and that upholds it. Here, God is banished from 
the thoughts of every natural man, and, by a firm 
and constantly maintained act of usurpation, do the 
things of sense and of time wield an entire ascend- 
ency. There, God is all in all. They walk in His 
light. They rejoice in the beatitudes of his pre- 
sence. The veil is from off their eyes ; and they see 
the character of a presiding Divinity in every scene, 
and in every event to which the Divinity has given 
birth. It is this which stamps a glory and an im- 
portance on the whole field of their contemplations ; 
and when they see a new evolution in the history of 
created things, the reason they bend towards it so 
attentive an eye, is, that it speaks to their under- 
standing some new evolution in the purposes of God 
— some new manifestation of His high attributes- 
some new and interesting step in the history of His 
sublime administration. 

Now, we ought to be aware how it takes off, not 
from the intrinsic weight, but from the actual im- 
pression of our argument, that this devotedness to God 
which reigns in other places of the creation ; this in- 
terest in Him as the constant and essential principle 
of all enjoyment ; this concern in the untainfcedness 
of his glory ; this delight in the survey of His per- 
fections and His doings, are what the men of our 
corrupt and darkened world cannot sympathize with. 

But however little we may enter into it, the Bible 
tells us, by many intimations, that amongst those 



IN DISTANT PLACES OF CREATION. 



99 



creatures who have not fallen from their allegiance, 
nor departed from the living God, God is their all 
— that love to him sits enthroned in their hearts, 
and fills them with all the ecstasy of an overwhelming 
affection — that a sense of grandeur never so elevates 
their souls, as when they look at the might and 
majesty of the Eternal — that no field of cloudless 
transparency so enchants them by the blissfulness of 
its visions, as when, at the shrine of infinite and un- 
spotted holiness, they bend themselves in raptured 
adoration — that no beauty so fascinates and attracts 
them, as does that moral beauty which throws a 
softening lustre over the awfulness of the Godhead 
— in a word, that the image of His character is ever 
present to their contemplations, and the unceasing 
joy of their sinless existence lies in the knowledge 
and the admiration of Deity. 

Let us put forth an effort, and keep a steady hold of 
this consideration, for the deadness of our earthly im- 
aginations makes an effort necessary ; and we shall 
perceive, that though the world we live in were the 
alone theatre of redemption, there is a something in 
the redemption itself that is fitted to draw the eye 
of an arrested universe towards it. Surely, where 
delight in God is the constant enjoyment, and the 
earnest intelligent contemplation of God is the 
constant exercise, there is nothing in the whole com- 
pass of nature or of history, that can so set His 
adoring myriads upon the gaze, as some new and 
wondrous evolution of the character of God. Now 
this is found in the plan of our redemption ; nor do 
we see how, in any transaction between the great 
Father of existence, and the children who have 



100 



KNOWLEDGE OF MAN'S MORAL HISTORY 



sprung from Him, the moral attributes of the Deity 
could, if we may so express ourselves, be put to so 
severe and so delicate a test. It is true, that the 
great matters of sin and of salvation fall without 
impression on the heavy ears of a listless and alien- 
ated world. But they who, to use the language of 
the Bible, are light in the Lord, look otherwise at 
these things. They see sin in all its malignity, and 
salvation in all its mysterious greatness. And it 
would put them on the stretch of all their faculties, 
when they saw rebellion lifting up its standard 
against the Majesty of heaven, and the truth 
and the justice of God embarked on the threat- 
enings He had uttered against all the doers of 
iniquity, and the honours of that august throne, 
which has the firm pillars of immutability to resl 
upon, linked with the fulfilment of the law that had 
come out from it ; and when nothing else was 
looked for, but that God by putting forth the power 
of His wrath, should accomplish His every denun- 
ciation, and vindicate the inflexibility of His govern- 
ment, and, by one sweeping deed of vengeance assert, 
in the sight of all His creatures, the sovereignty 
which belonged to Him — with what desire must they 
have pondered on His ways, when, amid the urgency 
of all those demands which looked so high and so 
indispensable, they saw the unfoldings of the attri- 
bute of mercy — and that the supreme Lawgiver was 
bending upon His guilty creatures an eye of tender- 
ness — and that, in His profound and unsearchable 
wisdom, He was devising for them some plan of 
restoration — and that the eternal Son had to move 
from His dwelling-place in heaven, to carry it for- 



IS DISTANT PLACES OF CREATION. 1 i 

ward through all the difficulties by which it was en- 
compassed — and that, after by the virtue of His 
mysterious sacrifice He had magnified the glory of 
every other perfection, He made mercy rejoice over 
them all, and threw open a way by which we sinful 
and polluted wanderers might, with the whole lustre 
of the Divine character untarnished, be re-admitted 
into fellowship with God, and be again brought back 
within the circle of His loyal and affectionate family. 

Now, the essential character of such a transac- 
tion, viewed as a manifestation of God, does not hang 
upon the number of worlds over which this sin and 
this salvation may have extended. We know that 
over this one world such an economy of wisdom and 
of mercy is instituted — and, even should this be the 
only world that is embraced by it, the moral display 
of the Godhead is mainly and substantially the 
same, as if it reached throughout the whole of that 
habitable extent which the science of astronomy 
has made known to us. By the disobedience of this 
one world, the law was trampled on — and, in the 
business of making truth and mercy to meet, and 
have a harmonious accomplishment on the men of 
this world, the dignity of God was put to the same 
trial ; the justice of God appeared to lay the same 
immovable barrier ; the wisdom of God had to clear 
a way through the same difficulties ; the forgiveness 
of God had to find the same mysterious conveyance 
to the sinners of a solitary world, as to the sinners 
of half a universe. The extent of the field upon 
which this question was decided, has no more in- 
fluence on the question itself, than the figure or the 
dimensions of that field of combat on which some 



102 



KNOWLEDGE OF MAN'S MORAL HISTORY 



great political question was fought, has on the im- 
portance or on the moral principles of the contro- 
versy that gave rise to it. This objection about the 
narrowness of the theatre, carries along with it all 
the grossness of materialism. To the eye of spiritual 
and intelligent beings, it is nothing. In their view, 
the redemption of a sinful world derives its chief 
interest from the display it gives of the mind and 
purposes of the Deity — and, should that world be 
but a single speck in the immensity of the works of 
God, the only way in which this affects their estimate 
of Him is to magnify His loving-kindness — who, 
rather than lose one solitary world of the myriads 
He has formed, would lavish all the riches of His 
beneficence and of His wisdom on the recovery of 
its guilty population. 

Now, though it must be admitted that the Bible 
does not speak clearly or decisively as to the proper 
effect of redemption being extended to other worlds ; 
it speaks most clearly and most decisively about the 
knowledge of it being disseminated amongst other 
orders of created intelligence than our own. But 
if the contemplation of God be their supreme en- 
joyment, then the very circumstance of our redemp- 
tion being known to them, may invest it, even 
though it be but the redemption of one solitary world, 
w T ith an importance as wide as the universe itself. 
It may spread amongst the hosts of immensity a 
new illustration of the character of Him who is all 
their praise ; and in looking towards whom every 
energy within them is moved to the exercise of a 
deep and delighted admiration. The scene of the 
transaction may be narrow in point of material ex- 



IN DISTANT PLACES OF CREATION. 



103 



tent ; while in the transaction itself there may be 
such a moral dignity, as to blazon the perfections of 
the Godhead over the face of creation ; and, from 
the manifested glory of the Eternal, to send forth a 
tide of ecstasy, and of high gratulation, throughout 
the whole extent of His dependent provinces. 

We shall not, in proof of the position, that the 
history of our redemption is known in other and 
distant places of creation, and is matter of deep 
interest and feeling amongst other orders of created 
intelligence — we shall not put down all the quota- 
tions which might be assembled together upon this 
argument. It is an impressive circumstance, that 
when Moses and Elias made a visit to our Saviour 
on the mount of transfiguration, and appeared in 
glory from heaven, the topic they brought along 
with them, and with which they were fraught, was 
the decease He was going to accomplish at Jeru- 
salem. And however insipid the things of our 
salvation may be to an earthly understanding, we 
are made to know, that in the sufferings of Christ, 
and the glory which should follow, there is matter 
to attract the notice of celestial spirits, for these 
are the very things, says the Bible, which angels 
desire to look into. And however listlessly we, the 
dull and grovelling children of an exiled family, 
may feel about the perfections of the Godhead, and 
the display of these perfections in the economy of 
the Gospel, it is intimated to us in the book of 
God's message, that the creation has its districts and 
its provinces ; and we accordingly read of thrones 
and dominions and principalities and powers — and 
whether these terms denote the separate regions of 



ii)4 KNOWLEDGE OF MAN'S MORAL HISTORY 



government, or the beings who, by a commission 
granted from the sanctuary of heaven, sit in dele- 
gated authority over them — even in their eyes the 
mystery of Christ stands arrayed in all the splendour 
of unsearchable riches ; for we are told that this 
mystery was revealed for the very intent, that unto 
the principalities and powers, in heavenly places, 
might be made known by the church, the 'manifold 
wisdom of God. And while we, whose prospect 
reaches not beyond the narrow limits of the corner 
we occupy, look on the dealings of God in the world, 
as carrying in them all the insignificancy of a 
provincial transaction ; God Himself, whose eye 
reaches to places which our eye hath not seen, nor 
our ear heard of, neither hath it entered into the 
imagination of our heart to conceive, stamps a 
universality on the whole matter of the Christian 
salvation, by such revelations as the following : — 
That he is to gather together in one all things in 
Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are 
in earth, even in him — and that at the name of Jesus 
every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and 
things in earth, and things under the earth — and 
that by him God reconciled all things unto himself, 
whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven. 

We will not say in how far some of these passages 
extend the proper effect of that redemption which 
is by Christ Jesus, to other quarters of the universe 
of God ; but they at least go to establish a widely 
disseminated knowledge of this transaction amongst 
the other orders of created intelligence. And they 
give us a distant glimpse of something more ex- 
tended. They present a faint opening, through 



IN DISTANT PLACES OF CREATION. 



105 



which may be seen some few traces of a wider and 
a nobler dispensation. They bring before us a dim 
transparency, on the other side of which the images 
of an obscure magnificence dazzle indistinctly upon 
the eye ; and tell us, that in the economy of re- 
demption, there is a grandeur commensurate to all 
that is known of the other works and purposes of 
the Eternal. They offer us no details ; and man, 
who ought not to attempt a wisdom above that 
which is written, should never put forth his hand 
to the drapery of that impenetrable curtain which 
God, in his mysterious wisdom, has spread over 
those ways, of which it is but a very small portion 
that we in reality know. But certain it is, that we 
know so much of them from the Bible ; and the 
Infidel, with all the pride of his boasted astronomy, 
knows so little of them, from any power of observa- 
tion — that the baseless argument of his, on which 
we have dwelt so long, is overborne in the light of 
all that positive evidence which God has poured 
around the record of His own testimony, and even in 
the light of its more obscure and casual intimations. 

The minute and variegated details of the way in 
which this wondrous economy is extended, God has 
chosen to withhold from us ; but He has oftener than 
once made to us a broad and a general announcement 
of its dignity. He does not tell us, whether the 
fountain opened in the house of Judah, for sin and 
for uncleanness, sends forth its healing streams to 
other worlds than our own. He does not tell us the 
extent of the atonement. But He tells us that the 
atonement itself, known, as it is, among the myriads 
of the celestial, forms the high song of eternity ; that 



106 KNOWLEDGE OF MAN*S MORAL HISTORY 

the Lamb who was slain, is surrounded by the ac- 
clamations of one wide and universal empire ; that 
the might of His wondrous achievements spreads 
a tide of gratulation over the multitudes who are 
about his throne ; and that there never ceases to 
ascend from the worshippers of Him, who washed us 
from our sins in His blood, a voice loud as from num- 
bers without number, sweet as from blessed voices 
uttering joy, when heaven rings jubilee, and loud 
hosannas fill the eternal regions. 

" And I beheld, and I heard the voice of many 
angels round about the throne ; and the number of 
them was ten thousand times ten thousand, and 
thousands of thousands ; saying with a loud voice, 
Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, 
and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, 
and glory, and blessing. And every creature which 
is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, 
and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, 
heard I saying, Blessing, and honour, and glory, and 
power, be unto him that sitteth upon the throne, and 
unto the Lamb, for ever and ever/'' 

A king might have the whole of his reign crowded 
with the enterprises of glory ; and by the might of 
his arms, and the wisdom of his counsels, might 
win the first reputation among the potentates of the 
world ; and be idolized throughout all his provinces, 
for the wealth and the security that he had spread 
around them — and still it is conceivable, that by the 
act of a single day in behalf of a single family ; by 
some soothing visitation of tenderness to a poor and 
solitary cottage ; by some deed of compassion, which 
conferred enlargement and relief on one despairing 



IN DISTANT PLACES OF CREATION. 



107 



sufferer ; by some graceful movement of sensibility 
at a tale of wretchedness ; by some noble effort of 
self-denial, in virtue of which he subdued his every 
purpose of revenge, and spread the mantle of a gener- 
ous oblivion over the fault of the man who had in- 
sulted and aggrieved him ; above all, by an exercise 
of pardon so skilfully administered, as that, instead 
of bringing him down to a state of defencelessness 
against the provocation of future injuries, it threw 
a deeper sacredness over him, and stamped a more 
inviolable dignity than ever on his person and charac- 
ter : — why, on the strength of one such performance, 
done in a single hour, and reaching no farther in its 
immediate effects than to one house, or to one indi- 
vidual, it is a most possible thing, that the highest 
monarch upon earth might draw such a lustre around 
him, as would eclipse the renown of all his public 
achievements — and that such a display of mag- 
nanimity, or of worth, beaming from the secrecy of 
his familiar moments, might waken a more cordial 
veneration in every bosom, than all the splendour of 
his conspicuous history — aye, and that it might pass 
down to posterity as a more enduring monument 
of greatness, and raise him farther, by its moral 
elevation, above the level of ordinary praise ; and 
when he passes in review before the men of distant 
ages, may this deed of modest, gentle, unobtrusive 
virtue, be at all times appealed to as the most 
sublime and touching memorial of his name. 

In like manner did the King eternal, immortal, 
and invisible, surrounded as He is with the splen- 
dours of a wide and everlasting monarchy, turn 
Him to our humble habitation ; and the footsteps 



108 KNOWLEDGE OF MAN'S MORAL HISTORY 

of God manifest in the flesh, have been on the nar- 
row spot of ground we occupy ; and small though 
our mansion be amid the orbs and the systems of 
immensity, hither hath the King of glory bent His 
mysterious way, and entered the tabernacle of men, 
and in the disguise of a servant did He sojourn for 
years under the roof which canopies our obscure 
and solitary world. Yes, it is but a twinkling atom 
in the peopled infinity of worlds that are around it 
— but look to the moral grandeur of the transaction, 
and not to the material extent of the field upon 
which it was executed — and from the retirement of 
our dwelling-place, there may issue forth such a 
display of the Godhead, as will circulate the glories 
of His name amongst all his worshippers. Here 
sin entered. Here was the kind and universal 
beneficence of a Father repaid by the ingratitude 
of a whole family. Here the law of God was dis- 
honoured, and that too in the face of its proclaimed 
and unalterable sanctions. Here the mighty con- 
test of the attributes was ended — and when justice 
put forth its demands, and. truth called for the 
fulfilment of its warnings, and the immutability of 
God would not recede by a single iota from any one 
of its positions, and all the severities He had ever 
uttered against the children of iniquity, seemed to 
gather into one cloud of threatening vengeance on 
the tenement that held us — did the visit of the only- 
begotten Son chase away all these obstacles to the 
triumph of mercy — and humble as the tenement 
may be, deeply shaded in the obscurity of insigni- 
ficance as it is, among the statelier mansions which 
are on every side of it — yet will the recall of its 



IN DISTANT PLACES OF CREATION. 



109 



exiled family never be forgotten, and the illustration 
that has been given here of the mingled grace and 
majesty of God will never lose its place among the 
themes and the acclamations of eternity. 

And here it may be remarked, that as the earthly 
king who throws a moral aggrandizement around him 
by the act of a single day, finds, that after its per- 
formance he may have the space of many years for 
gathering to himself the triumphs of an extended 
reign — so the King who sits on high, and with whom 
one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years 
as one day, will find, that after the period of that 
special administration is ended, by which this stray- 
ed world is again brought back within the limits of 
His favoured creation, there is room enough along 
the mighty track of eternity, for accumulating upon 
Himself a glory as wide and as universal as is the 
extent of his dominions. You will allow the most 
illustrious of this world's potentates, to give some 
hour of his private history to a deed of cottage or of 
domestic tenderness ; and every time you think of 
the interesting story, you will feel how sweetly and 
how gracefully the remembrance of it blends itself 
with the fame of his public achievements. But still 
you think that there would not have been room 
enough for these achievements of his, had much of 
his time been spent, either amongst the habitations 
of the poor, or in the retirement of his own family ; 
and you conceive, that it is because a single day 
bears so small a proportion to the time of his whole 
history, that he has been able to combine an in- 
teresting display of private worth, with all that 
brilliancy of exhibition, which has brought him 



110 KNOWLEDGE OF MANS MORAL HISTORY 



down to posterity in the character of an august and 
a mighty sovereign. 

Now apply this to the matter before us. Had the 
history of our redemption been confined within the 
limits of a single day, the argument that Infidelity 
has drawn from the multitude of other worlds would 
never have been offered. It is true, that ours is but 
an insignificant portion of the territory of God — but 
if the attentions by which He has signalized it, had 
only taken up a single day, this would never have 
occurred to us as forming any sensible withdrawment 
of the mind of the Deity from the concerns of His 
vast and universal government. It is the time which 
the plan of our salvation requires, that startles all 
those on whom this argument has any impression. 
It is the time taken up about this paltry world, which 
they feel to be out of proportion to the number of 
other worlds, and to the immensity of the surround- 
ing creation. Now, to meet this impression, we do 
not insist at present on what we have already brought 
forward, that God, whose ways are not as our ways, 
can have His eye at the same instant on every place, 
and can divide and diversify His attention into any 
number of distinct exercises. What we have now to 
remark is, that the Infidel who urges the astrono- 
mical objection to the truth of Christianity, is only 
looking with half an eye to the principle on which 
it rests. Carry out the principle, and the objection 
vanishes. He looks abroad on the immensity of 
space, and tells us how impossible it is, that this nar- 
row corner of it can be so distinguished by the at- 
tentions of the Deity. Why does he not also look 
abroad on the magnificence of eternity ; and perceive 



IN DISTANT PLACES OF CREATION. 



Ill 



how the whole period of these peculiar attentions, 
how the whole time which elapses between the fall 
of man and the consummation of the scheme of his 
recovery, is but the twinkling of a moment to the 
mighty roll of innumerable ages ? The whole inter- 
val between the time of Jesus Christ's leaving his 
Father's abode to sojourn amongst us, to that time 
when He shall have put all His enemies under His 
feet, and delivered up the kingdom to God even his 
Father, that God may be all in all ; the whole of 
this interval bears as small a proportion to the whole 
of the Almighty's reign, as this solitary world does 
to the universe around it ; and an infinitely smaller 
proportion than any time, however short, which an 
earthly monarch spends on some enterprise of private 
benevolence, does to the whole walk of his public 
and recorded history. 

Why then does not the man, who can shoot his 
conceptions so sublimely abroad over the field of an 
immensity that knows no limits — why does he not 
also shoot them forward through the vista of a suc- 
cession that ever flows without stop and without ter- 
mination ? He has burst across the confines of this 
world's habitation in space, and out of the field which 
lies on the other side of it has he gathered an argu- 
ment against the truth of revelation. We feel that 
we have nothing to do but to burst across the confines 
of this world's history in time, and out of the futu- 
rity which lies beyond it can we gather that which 
will blow the argument to pieces, or stamp upon it 
all the narrowness of a partial and mistaken calcu- 
lation. The day is coming when the whole of this 
wondrous history shall be looked back upon by the 



112 KNOWLEDGE OF MAN'S MORAL HISTORY, ETC. 



eye of remembrance, and be regarded as one incident 
in the extended annals of creation ; and, with all 
the illustration and all the glory it has thrown on 
the character of the Deity, will it be seen as a single 
step in the evolution of His designs ; and long as 
the time may appear, from the first act of our re- 
demption to its final accomplishment, and close and 
exclusive as we may think the attentions of God 
upon it, it will be found that it has left Him room 
enough for all His concerns ; and that, on the high 
scale of eternity, it is but one of those passing and 
ephemeral transactions which crowd the history of 
a never-ending administration. 



THE SYMPATHY FELT FOE MAN, ETC. 



113 



DISCOURSE V. 

ON THE SYMPATHY THAT IS FELT FOR MAN IN THE 
DISTANT PLACES OF CREATION. 



" I say unto you, That likewise joy shall be in heaven over one 
sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, 
which need no repentance." — Luke xv. 7. 

We have already attempted at full length to es- 
tablish the position, that the infidel argument of 
astronomers goes to expunge a natural perfection 
from the character of God, even that wondrous 
property of His, by which He, at the same instant 
of time, can bend a close and a careful attention on 
a countless diversity of objects, and diffuse the inti- 
macy of His power and of His presence, from the 
greatest to the minutest and most insignificant of 
them all. We also adverted shortly to this other 
circumstance, that it went to impair a moral attri- 
bute of the Deity. It goes to impair the benevolence 
of His nature. It is sajdng much for the benevolence 
of God, to say, that a single world or a single system 
is not enough for it — that it must have the spread 
of a mightier region, on which it may pour forth a 
tide of exuberancy throughout all its provinces — 
that as far as our vision can carry us, it has strewed 
immensity with the floating receptacles of life, and 
7 h 



114 



THE SYMPATHY FELT FOR MAN 



has stretched over each of them the garniture of 
such a sky as mantles our own habitation — and that 
even from distances which are far beyond the reach 
of human eye, the songs of gratitude and praise may 
now be arising to the one God, who sits surrounded 
by the regards of His one great and universal family. 

Now it is saying much for the benevolence of 
God, to say, that it sends forth these wide and 
distant emanations over the surface of a territory 
so ample, that the world we inhabit, lying imbed- 
ded, as it does, amidst so much surrounding great- 
ness, shrinks into a point that to the universal eye 
might appear to be almost imperceptible. But 
does it not add to the power and to the perfection 
of this universal eye, that at the very moment it is 
taking a comprehensive survey of the vast, it can 
fasten a stead}'- and undistracted attention on each 
minute and separate portion of it ; that at the very 
moment it is looking at all worlds, it can look most 
pointedly and most intelligently to each of them ; 
that at the very moment it sweeps the field of im- 
mensity, it can settle all the earnestness of its re- 
gards upon every distinct handbreadth of that field ; 
that at the very moment at which it embraces the 
totality of existence, it can send a most thorough 
and penetrating inspection into each of its details, 
and into every one of its endless diversities ? We 
cannot fail to perceive how much this adds to the 
power of the all-seeing eye. Tell us then, if it do 
not add as much perfection to the benevolence of 
God, that while it is expatiating over the vast field 
of created things, there is not one portion of the field 
overlooked by it; that while it scatters blessings 



IN DISTANT FLACES OF CREATION. 



115 



over the whole of an infinite range, it causes them 
to descend in a shower of plenty on every separate 
habitation ; that while His arm is underneath and 
round about all worlds, He enters within the pre- 
cincts of every one of them, and gives a care and a 
tenderness to each individual of their teeming po- 
pulation. Oh ! does not the God, who is said to be 
love, shed over this attribute of his its finest illus- 
tration — when, while He sits in the highest heaven, 
and pours out His fulness on the whole subordinate 
domain of nature and of providence, He bows a 
pitying regard on the very humblest of His children, 
and sends His reviving Spirit into every heart, and 
cheers by His presence every home, and provides 
for the wants of every family, and watches every 
sick-bed, and listens to the complaints of every 
sufferer ; and while by his wondrous mind the 
weight of universal government is borne, oh, is it 
not more wondrous and more excellent still, that 
He feels for every sorrow, and has an ear open to 
every prayer ? 

" It doth not yet appear what we shall be/' says 
the apostle John, " but we know that when he shall 
appear, we shall be like him, for we shall see him 
as he is/' It is the present lot of the angels, that 
they behold the face of our Father in heaven, and it 
would seem as if the effect of this was to form and 
to perpetuate in them the moral likeness of Him- 
self, and that they reflect back upon Him His own 
image, and that thus a diffused resemblance to the 
Godhead is kept up amongst all those adoring wor- 
shippers who live in the near and rejoicing contem- 
plation of the Godhead. Mark then how that 



11 G 



THE SYMPATHY FELT FOR MAN 



peculiar and endearing feature in the goodness of 
the Deity, which we have just now adverted to — 
mark how beauteously it is reflected downwards 
upon us in the revealed attitude of angels. From 
the high eminences of heaven, are they bending a 
wakeful regard over the men of this sinful world ; 
and the repentance of every one of them spreads a 
joy and a high gratulation throughout all its dwell- 
ing-places. Put this trait of the angelic character 
into contrast with the dark and lowering spirit of an 
Infidel. He is told of the multitude of other worlds, 
and he feels a kindling magnificence in the concep- 
tion, and he is seduced by an elevation which he 
cannot carry, and from this airy summit does he look 
down on the insignificance of the world we occupy, 
and pronounces it to be unworthy of those visits and 
of those attentions which we read of in the New 
Testament, He is unable to wing his upward way 
along the scale, either of moral or of natural perfec- 
tion ; and when the wonderful extent of the field is 
made known to him, over which the wealth of the 
Divinity is lavished — there he stops, and wilders, 
and altogether misses this essential perception, that 
the power and perfection of the Divinity are not more 
displayed by the mere magnitude of the field, than 
they are by that minute and exquisite filling u'p, 
which leaves not its smallest portions neglected ; 
but which imprints the fulness of the Godhead upon 
every one of them ; and proves, by every flower of 
the pathless desert, as well as by every orb of im- 
mensity, how this unsearchable Being can care for 
all, and provide for all, and, throned in mystery too 
high for us, can, throughout every instant of time, 



IN DISTANT PLACES OF CREATION. 



117 



keep His attentive eye on every separate thing that 
He has formed, and, by an act of His thoughtful and 
presiding intelligence, can constantly embrace all. 

But God, compassed about as he is with light in- 
accessible, and full of glory, lies so hidden from the 
ken and conception of all our faculties, that the spirit 
of man sinks exhausted by its attempts to compre- 
hend Him. Could the image of the Supreme be 
placed direct before the eye of the mind, that flood 
of splendour, which is ever issuing from Him on all 
who have the privilege of beholding, would not only 
dazzle, but overpower us. And therefore it is, that 
we bid you look to the reflection of that image, and 
thus to take a view of its mitigated glories, and to 
gather the lineaments of the Godhead in the face of 
those righteous angels, who have never thrown aw r ay 
from them the resemblance in which they were 
created ; and, unable as you are to support the grace 
and the majesty of that countenance, before which 
the seers and the prophets of other days fell, and 
became as dead men, let us, before we bring this 
argument to a close, borrow one lesson of Him who 
sitteth on the throne, from the aspect and the re- 
vealed doings of those who are surrounding it. 

The Infidel, then, as he widens the field of his 
contemplations, would suffer its every separate object 
to die away into forgetfulness : these angels, expa- 
tiating as they do, over the range of a loftier univer- 
sality, are represented as all awake to the history of 
each of its distinct and subordinate provinces. The 
Infidel, with his mind afloat anions; suns and amono* 
systems, can find no place in his already occupied 
regards, for that humble planet which lodges and 



118 



THE SYMPATHY FELT FOR 31 AN 



accommodates our species : the angels, standing on a 
loftier summit, and with a mightier prospect of crea- 
tion before them, are yet represented as looking down 
on this single world, and attentively marking the 
every feeling and the every demand of all its fami- 
lies. The Infidel, by sinking us down to an tin- 
noticeable minuteness, would lose sight of our dwell- 
ing-place altogether, and spread a darkening shroud 
of oblivion over all the concerns and all the interests 
of men : but the angels will not so abandon us ; and, 
undazzled by the whole surpassing grandeur of that 
scenery which is around them, are they revealed as 
directing* all the fulness of their regard to this our 
habitation, and casting a longing and a benignant 
eye on ourselves and on our children. The Infidel 
will tell us of those worlds which roll afar, and the 
number of which outstrips the arithmetic of the 
human understanding — and then, with the hardness 
of an unfeeling calculation, will he consign the one 
we occupy, with all its guilty generations, to despair. 
But He who counts the number of the stars is set 
forth to us as looking* at every inhabitant among the 
millions of our species, and by the word of the Gos- 
pel beckoning to him with the hand of invitation, 
and on the very first step of his return, as moving 
towards him with all the eagerness of the prodigal's 
father, to receive him back again into that presence 
from which he had wandered. And as to this world, 
in favour of which the scowling Infidel will not per- 
mit one solitary movement, all heaven is represented 
as in a stir about its restoration ; and there cannot a 
single son, or a single daughter, be recalled from sin 
ttnto righteousness, without an acclamation of joy 



IN DISTANT PLACES OF CREATION. 



119 



amongst the hosts of Paradise. Aye, and we can say 
it of the humblest and the unworthiest of you all, 
that the eye of angels is upon him, and that his re- 
pentance would, at this moment, send forth a wave of 
delighted sensibility throughout the mighty throng 
of their innumerable legions. 

Now, the single question we have to ask is, On 
which of the two sides of this contrast do we see 
most of the impress of heaven ? Which of the two 
would be most glorifying to Grocl ? Which of them 
carries upon it most of that evidence which lies in 
its having a celestial character? For if it be the 
side of the Infidel, then must all our hopes expire 
with the ratifying of that fatal sentence, by which 
the world is doomed, through its insignificancy, to 
perpetual exclusion from the attentions of the God- 
head. We have lono; been knocking at the door of 
your understanding, and have tried to find an ad- 
mittance to it for many an argument. We now make 
our appeal to the sensibilities of your heart ; and 
tell us to whom does the moral feeling within it 
yield its readiest testimony — to the Infidel, who 
would make this world of ours vanish away into 
abandonment — or to those angels, who ring through- 
out all their mansions the htfsannas of joy, over every 
one individual of its repentant population ? 

And here we cannot omit to take advantage of 
that opening with which our Saviour has furnished 
us, by the parables of this chapter, and by which he 
admits us, into a familiar view of that principle on 
which the inhabitants of the heavens are so awake to 
the deliverance and the restoration of our species. To 
illustrate the difference in the reach of knowledge and 



120 



THE SYMPATHY FELT FOR MAN 



of affection, bet ween a man and an ano^el, let us think 
of the difference of reach between one man and an- 
other. You may often witness a man, who feels 
neither tenderness nor care beyond the precincts of 
his own family ; but who, on the strength of those in- 
stinctive fondnesses which nature has implanted in 
his bosom, may earn the character of an amiable 
father, or a kind husband, or a bright example of all 
that is soft and endearing in the relations of domestic 
society. Now conceive him, in addition to all this, to 
carry his affections abroad, without, at the same time , 
any abatement of their intensity towards the objects 
which are at home — that, stepping across the limits 
of the house he occupies, he takes an interest in the 
families which are near him — that he lends his ser- 
vices to the town or the district wherein he is placed, 
and gives up a portion of his time to the thoughtful 
labours of a humane and public-spirited citizen. By 
this enlargement in the sphere of his attention, he 
has extended his reach ; and, provided he has not 
done so at the expense of that regard which is due 
to his family, a thing which, cramped and confined 
as we are, we are very apt, in the exercise of our 
humble faculties, to do — I put it to you, whether by 
extending the reach of his views and his affections, 
he has not extended his worth and his moral respec- 
tability along with it ? 

But we can conceive a still farther enlargement. 
We can figure to ourselves a man, whose wakeful 
sympathy overflows the field of his own immediate 
neighbourhood — to whom the name of country comes 
with all the omnipotence of a charm upon his heart, 
and with all the urgency of a most righteous and re- 



IN DISTANT PLACES OF CREATION. 



121 



sistless claim upon his services — who never hears the 
name of Britain sounded in his ears, but it stirs up 
all his enthusiasm in behalf of the worth and the 
welfare of its people — who gives himself up, with all 
the devotedness of a passion, to the best and the 
purest objects of patriotism — and who, spurning away 
from him the vulgarities of party ambition, separates 
his life and his labours to the fine pursuit of aug- 
menting the science, or the virtue, or the substantial 
prosperity of his nation. Oh, could such a man re- 
tain all the tenderness, and fulfil all the duties which 
home and which neighbourhood require of him, and 
at the same time, expatiate in the might of his un- 
tired faculties, on so wide a field of benevolent con- 
templation — would not this extension of reach place 
him still higher than before on the scale both of 
moral and intellectual gradation, and give him a 
still brighter and more enduring name in the records 
of human excellence ? 

And lastly, we can conceive a still loftier flight of 
humanity — a man, the aspiring of whose heart for 
the good of man, knows no limitations — whose long- 
ings and whose conceptions on this subject, overleap 
all the barriers of geography — who looking on him- 
self as a brother of the species, links every spare 
energy which belongs to him, with the cause of its 
amelioration — who can embrace within the grasp of 
his ample desires, the whole family of mankind — 
and who, in obedience to a heaven -born movement 
of principle within him, separates himself to some 
big and busy enterprise, which is to tell on the moral 
destinies of the world. Oh, could such a man mix up 
the softenings of private virtue, with the habit of so 



122 



THE SYMPATHY FELT FOR MAN 



sublime a comprehension — if, amid those mag- 
nificent darings of thought and of performance, the 
mildness of his benignant eye could still continue to 
cheer the retreat of his family, and to spread the 
charm and the sacredness of piety among all its 
members — could he even mingle himself in all the 
gentleness of a soothed and a smiling heart, with 
the playfulness of his children— and also find 
strength to shed the blessings of his presence and 
his counsel over the vicinity around him ; — oh, would 
not the combination of so much grace with so much 
loftiness, only serve the more to aggrandize him ? 
Would not the one ingredient of a character so rare, 
go to illustrate and to magnify the other? And 
w T oulcl not you pronounce him to be the fairest 
specimen of our nature, w T ho could so call out all 
your tenderness, while he challenged and compelled 
all your veneration ? 

Nor can we proceed, at this point of our argument, 
without adverting to the way in which this last and 
this largest style of benevolence is exemplified in 
our own country — where the spirit of the Gospel has 
given to many of its enlightened disciples the im- 
pulse of such a philanthropy, as carries abroad their 
wishes and their endeavours to the very outskirts 
of human population — a philanthropy, of which, if 
you asked the extent or the boundary of its field, we 
should answer in the language of inspiration, that 
the field is the world — a philanthropy which over- 
looks all the distinctions of cast and of colour, and 
spreads its ample regards over the whole brotherhood 
of the species — a philanthropy which attaches itself 
to man in the general ; to man throughout all his 



IN DISTANT PLACES OF CREATION. 



J 23 



varieties ; to man as the partaker of one common 
nature, and who, in whatever clime or latitude you 
may meet with him, is found to breathe the same 
sympathies, and to possess the same high capabili- 
ties both of bliss and of improvement. It is true, 
that, upon this subject, there is often a loose and 
unsettled magnificence of thought, which is fruitful 
of nothing but empty speculation. But the men to 
whom we allude, have not imaged the enterprise in 
the form of a thing unknown. They have given it a 
local habitation. They have bodied it forth in deed 
and in accomplishment. They have turned the dream 
into a reality. In them, the power of a lofty gene- 
ralization meets with its happiest attemperment, 
in the principle and perseverance, and all the chas- 
tening and subduing virtues of the New Testament. 
And, were we in search of that fine union of grace 
and of greatness which we have now been insisting 
on, and in virtue of which, the enlightened Christian 
can at once find room in his bosom for the concerns 
of universal humanity, and for the play of kindliness 
towards every individual he meets with — we could 
nowhere more readily expect to find it, than with .the 
worthies of our own land — the Howard of a former 
generation, who paced it over Europe in quest of the 
unseen wretchedness which abounds in it — or in such 
men of our present generation, as Wilberforce, who 
lifted his unwearied voice against the biggest out- 
rage ever practised on our nature, till he wrought 
its extermination — and Clarkson, who plied his as- 
siduous task at rearing the materials of its impres- 
sive history, and, at length carried, for this right- 
eous cause, the mind of Parliament — and Carey, from 



124 



THE SYMPATHY FELT FOR MAN 



whose hand the generations of the East are now re- 
ceiving the elements of their moral renovation — and, 
in fine, those holy and devoted men, who count not 
their lives dear unto them ; but, going forth every 
year from the island of our habitation, carry the mes- 
sage of heaven over the face of the world ; and, in 
the front of severest obloquy, are now labouring in 
remotest lands ; and are reclaiming another and an- 
other portion from the wastes of dark and fallen huma- 
nity ; and are widening the domains of gospel light 
and gospel principle amongst them ; and are spread- 
ing a moral beauty around the every spot on which 
they pitched their lowly tabernacle ; and are at 
length compelling even the eye and the testimony of 
gainsayers, by the success of their noble enterprise ; 
and are forcing the exclamation of delighted sur- 
prise from the charmed and the arrested traveller, 
as he looks at the softening tints which they are 
now spreading over the wilderness, and as he hears 
the sound of the chapel bell, and as in those haunts 
where, at the distance of half a generation, savages 
w r ould have scowled upon his path, he regales him- 
self with the hum of missionary schools, and the 
lovely spectacle of peaceful and Christian villages. 

Such, then, is the benevolence, at once so gentle 
and so lofty, of those men, who, sanctified by the 
faith that is in Jesus, have had their hearts visited 
from heaven by a beam of warmth and of sacrcdness. 
What, then, we should like to know, is the bene- 
volence of the place from whence such an influence 
cometh ? How wide is the compass of this virtue 
there, and how exquisite is the feeling of its tender- 
ness, and how pure and how fervent arc its aspirings 



IN DISTANT PLACES OF CREATION. 



125 



among those unfallen beings who have no darkness, 
and no encumbering weight of corruption to strive 
against ? Angels have a mighter reach of contem- 
plation. Angels can look upon this world and all 
which it inherits, as the part of a larger family. 
Angels were in the full exercise of their powers even 
at the first infancy of our species, and shared in the 
gratulations of that period, when, at the birth of 
humanity, all intelligent nature felt a gladdening im- 
pulse, and the morning stars sang together for joy. 
They loved us even with the love which a family on 
earth bears to a younger sister ; and the very child- 
hood of our tinier faculties did only serve the more 
to endear us to them ; and though born at a later 
hour in the history of creation, did they regard us as 
heirs of the same destiny with themselves, to rise 
along with them in the scale of moral elevation, to 
bow at the same footstool, and to partake in those 
high dispensations of a parent's kindness and a 
parent's care, which are ever emanating from the 
throne of the Eternal on all the members of a dute- 
ous and affectionate family. Take the reach of an 
angel's mind, but, at the same time, take the sera- 
phic fervour of an angel's benevolence along with 
it ; how, from the eminence on which he stands, he 
may have an eye upon many worlds, and a remem- 
brance upon the origin and the successive concerns 
of every one of them ; how he may feel the full force 
of a most affecting relationship with the habitants 
of each, as the offspring of one common Father; and 
though it be both the effect and the evidence of our 
depravity, that we cannot sympathize with these pure 
and generous ardours of a celestial spirit ; how it 



126 



THE SYMPATHY FELT FOE MAN 



may consist with the lofty comprehension, and the 
ever-breathing love of an angel, that he can bot h shoot 
his benevolence abroad over a mighty expanse of 
planets and of systems, and lavish a flood of tender- 
ness on each individual of their teeming population. 

Keep all this in view, and you cannot fail to per- 
ceive how the principle, so finely and so copiously 
illustrated in this chapter, may be brought to meet 
the infidelity we have thus long been employed in 
combating. It was nature, and the experience of 
every bosom will affirm it — it was nature in the shep- 
herd to leave the ninety and nine of his flock for- 
gotten and alone in the wilderness, and betaking 
himself to the mountains, to give all his labour and 
all his concern to the pursuit of one solitary wan- 
derer. It was nature — and we are told in the pas- 
sage before us, that it is such a portion of nature 
as belongs not merely to men but to angels — when 
the woman, with her mind in a state of listlessness 
as to the nine pieces of silver that were in secure 
custody, turned the whole force of her anxiety to 
the one piece which she had lost, and for which she 
had to light a candle, and to sweep the house, and 
to search diligently until she found it. It was 
nature in her to rejoice more over that piece than 
over all the rest of them, and to tell it abroad among 
friends and neighbours, that they might rejoice along 
with her — aye, and sadly effaced as humanity is, in all 
her original lineaments, this is a part of our nature, 
the very movements of which arc experienced in 
heaven, " where there is more joy over one sinner that 
rcpcntcth, than over ninety and nine just persons 
who need no repentance/' For anything we know, 



m DISTANT PLACES OF CREATION. 



127 



the very planet that rolls in the immensity around 
us may be a land of righteousness ; and be a member 
of the household of God ; and have her secure dwell- 
ing-place within that ample limit, whicli embraces 
His great and universal family. But we know at least 
of one wanderer ; and how wofully she has strayed 
from peace and from purity ; and how in dreary 
alienation from Him who made her, she has bewil- 
dered herself amongst those many devious tracts, 
which have carried her afar from the path of im- 
mortality ; and how sadly tarnished all those beau- 
ties and felicities are, whicli promised, on that morn- 
ing of her existence when God looked on her, and 
saw that all was very good — which promised so richly 
to bless and to adorn her ; and how, in the eye of 
the whole unfallen creation, she lias renounced all this 
goodliness, and is fast departing away from them into 
guilt, and wretchedness, and shame. Oh ! if there 
be any truth in this chapter, and any sweet or touch- 
ing nature in the principle which runs throughout 
all its parables, let us cease to wonder though they 
who surround the throne of love should be looking 
so intently towards us — or though, in the way by 
which they have singled us out, all the other orbs of 
space should, for one short season, on the scale of 
eternity, appear to be forgotten — or though, for every 
step of her recovery, and for every individual who is 
rendered back again to the fold from which he was 
separated, another and another message of triumph 
should be made to circulate amongst the hosts of 
paradise — or though, lost as we are, and sunk in de- 
pravity as we are, all the sympathies of heaven 
should now be awake on the enterprise of Him who 



128 



THE SYMPATHY FELT FOR MAN 



has travailed in the greatness of his strength to seek 
and to save us. 

And here we cannot but remark how fine a har- 
mony there is between the law of sympathetic nature 
in heaven, and the most touching exhibitions of it 
on the face of our world. "When one of a numerous 
household droops under the power of disease, is not 
that the one to whom all the tenderness is turned, 
and who, in a manner, monopolizes the inquiries of 
his neighbourhood, and the care of his family? When 
the sighing of the midnight storm sends a dismal 
foreboding into the mother's heart, to whom of all 
her offspring, we Avould ask, are her thoughts and 
her anxieties then wandering ? Is it not to her 
sailor boy whom her fancy has placed amid the rude 
and angry surges of the ocean ? Does not this, the 
hour of his apprehended danger, concentrate upon 
him the whole force of her wakeful meditations ? 
And does not he engross, for a season, her every 
sensibility, and her every prayer ? "We sometimes 
hear of shipwrecked passengers thrown upon a bar- 
barous shore ; and seized upon by its prowling in- 
habitants ; and hurried away through the tracks of 
a dreary and unknown wilderness ; and sold into 
captivity ; and loaded with the fetters of irrecover- 
able bondage ; and who, stripped of every other 
liberty but the liberty of thought, feel even this to be 
another ingredient of wretchedness, for what can they 
think of but home? and as all its kind and tender 
imagery comes upon their remembrance, how can 
they think of it but in the bitterness of despair ? 
Oh tell us, when the fame of all this disaster reaches 
his family, who is the member of it to whom is direct- 



IN DISTANT PLACES OF CREATION. 



129 



ed the full tide of its griefs and of its sympathies? 
Who is it that, for weeks and for months, usurps their 
every feeling, and calls out their largest sacrifices, 
a,nd sets them to the busiest expedients for getting 
him back again ? Who is it that makes them for- 
getful of themselves and of all around them ? and 
tell us if you can assign a limit to the pains, and the 
exertions, and the surrenders which afflicted parents 
and weeping sisters would make to seek and to save 
him ? 

Now conceive, as we are warranted to do by the 
parables of this chapter, the # principle of all these 
earthly exhibitions to be in full operation around the 
throne of God. Conceive the universe to be one 
secure and rejoicing family, and that this alienated 
world is the only strayed, or only captive member 
belonging to it ; and we shall cease to wonder, that, 
from the first period of the captivity of our species, 
down to the consummation of their history in time, 
there should be such a movement in heaven ; or that 
angels should so often have sped their commissioned 
way on the errand of our recovery ; or that the Son 
of God should have bowed Himself down to the 
burden of our mysterious atonement ; or that the 
Spirit of God should now, by the busy variety of His 
all-powerful influences, be carrying forward that dis- 
pensation of grace which is to make us meet for re- 
admittance into the mansions of the celestial. Only 
think of love as the reigning principle there ; of love, 
as sending forth its energies and aspirations to the 
quarter where its object is most in danger of being 
for ever lost to it, of love, as called forth by this single 
circumstance to its uttermost exertion, and the most 
7 i 



130 



SYMPATHY FELT FOR MAN 



exquisite feeling of its tenderness ; and then shall we 
come to a distinct and familiar explanation of this 
whole mystery ; nor shall we resist, by our incre- 
dulity, the gospel message any longer, though it tells 
us, that throughout the whole of this world's history, 
long in our eyes, but only a little month in the high 
periods of immortality, so much of the vigilance, and 
so much of the earnestness of heaven, should have 
been expended on the recovery of its guilty popu- 
lation. 

There is another touching trait of nature, which 
goes finely to heighten this principle,, and still more 
forcibly to demonstrate its application to our present 
argument. So long as the dying child of David was 
alive, he was kept on the stretch of anxiety and of 
suffering with regard to it. When it expired, he 
arose and comforted himself. This narrative of King 
David is in harmony with all that we experience of 
our own movements and our own sensibilities. It is 
the power of uncertainty which gives them so active 
and so interesting a play in our bosoms ; and which 
heightens all our regards to a tenfold pitch of feeling 
and of exercise ; and which fixes down our watch- 
fulness upon our infant's dying bed; and which keeps 
us so painfully alive to every turn and to every 
symptom in the progress of its malady ; and which 
draws out all our affections for it to a degree of in- 
tensity that is quite unutterable ; and which urges 
us on to ply our every effort and our every expedient, 
till hope withdraw its lingering beam, or till death 
shut the eyes of our beloved in the slumber of its 
long and its last repose. 

We know not who of you have your names written 



IN DISTANT PLACES OF CREATION. 



131 



in the book of life — nor can we tell if this be known 
to the angels which are in heaven. While in the 
land of living men, you are under the power and ap- 
plication of a remedy, which, if taken as the Gospel 
prescribes, will renovate the soul, and altogether pre- 
pare it for the bloom and the vigour of immortality. 
Wonder not then, that with this principle of un- 
certainty in such full operation, ministers should feel 
for you ; or angels should feel for you ; or all the 
sensibilities of heaven should be awake upon the 
symptoms of your grace and reformation ; or the eyes 
of those who stand upon the high eminences of the 
celestial world, should be so earnestly fixed on every 
footstep and new evolution of your moral history. 
Such a consideration as this should do something 
more than silence the Infidel objection. It should 
give a practical effect to the calls of repentance. 
How will it go to aggravate the whole guilt of our 
inipenitency, should we stand out against the power 
and the tenderness of these manifold applications — 
the voice of a beseeching God upon us — the word of 
salvation at our very door — the free offer of strength 
and of acceptance sounded in our hearing — the spirit 
in readiness with His agency to meet our every desire 
and our every inquiry — angels beckoning us to their 
company — and the very first movements of our 
awakened conscience drawing upon us all their re- 
gards and all their earnestness ! 



132 



CONTEST FOR ASCENDENCY OVER MAN 



DISCOURSE VI. 

ON THE CONTEST FOE AN ASCENDENCY OVER MAN 
AMONGST THE HIGHER ORDERS OF INTELLIGENCE. 



" And having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a show 
of them openly, triumphing over them in it." — Colossians ii. 15. 

Though these Astronomical Discourses be now 
drawing to a close, it is not because we feel that much 
more might not be said on the subject of them, both 
in the way of argument and of illustration. The 
whole of the Infidel difficulty proceeds upon the as- 
sumption, that the exclusive bearing of Christianity 
is upon the people of our earth ; that this solitary 
planet is in no way implicated with the concerns of 
a wider dispensation ; that the revelation we have of 
the dealings of God in this district of His empire, 
does not suit and subordinate itself to a system of 
moral administration, as extended as is the whole of 
His monarchy. Or, in other words, because Infidels 
have not access to the whole truth, will they refuse 
a part of it, however well attested or well accredited 
it may be ; because a mantle of deep obscurity rests 
on the government of God, when taken in all its eter- 
nity and all its entireness, will they shut their eyes 
against that allowance of light which has been made 



AMONG THE HIGHER INTELLIGENCES. 



138 



to pass downwards upon our world from time to time 
through so many partial unfoldings ; and till they 
are made to know the share which other planets 
have in these communications of mercy, will they turn 
them away from the actual message which has come 
to their own door, and will neither examine its cre- 
dentials, nor be alarmed by its warnings, nor be won 
by the tenderness of its invitations ? 

On that day when the secrets of all hearts shall 
be revealed, there will be found such a wilful dupli- 
city and darkening of the mind in the whole of this 
proceeding, as shall bring down upon it the burden 
of a righteous condemnation. But even now does 
it lie open to the rebuke of philosophy, when the 
soundness and the consistency of her principles are 
brought faithfully to bear upon it. Were the char- 
acter of modern science rightly understood, it would 
be seen, that the very thing which gave such strength 
and sureness to all her conclusions, was that humi- 
lity of spirit which belonged to her. She promul- 
gates all that is positively known ; but she main- 
tains the strictest silence and modesty about all that 
is unknown. She thankfully accepts of evidence 
wherever it can be found ; nor does she spurn away 
from her the very humblest contribution of such 
doctrine, as can be witnessed by human observation, 
or can be attested by human veracity. But with 
all this she can hold out most sternly against that 
power of eloquence and fancy, which often throws 
so bewitching a charm over the plausibilities of in- 
genious speculation. Truth is the alone idol of 
her reverence ; and did she at all times keep by her 
attachments, nor throw them away when theology 



134 



CONTEST FOR ASCENDENCY OVER MAN 



submitted to her cognizance its demonstrations and 
its claims, we should not despair of witnessing as 
great a revolution in those prevailing habitudes of 
thought which obtain throughout our literary estab- 
lishments, on the subject of Christianity, as that 
which has actually taken place in the views which 
obtain on the philosophy of external nature. This 
is the first field on w T hich have been successfully 
practised the experimental lessons of Bacon ; and 
they who are conversant w T ith these matters, know 
how great and how general a uniformity of doctrine 
now prevails in the science of astronomy, and me- 
chanics, and chemistry, and almost all the other de- 
partments in the history and philosophy of matter. 
But this uniformity stands strikingly contrasted with 
the diversity of our moral systems, with the restless 
fluctuations both of language and of sentiment which 
are taking place in the philosophy of mind, with 
the palpable fact, that every new course of instruc- 
tion upon this subject has some new articles, or some 
new r explanations to peculiarize it : and all this is to 
be attributed, not to the progress of the science, not 
to a growing, but to an alternating movement, not 
to its perpetual additions, but to its perpetual vibra- 
tions. 

We mean not to assert the futility of moral science, 
or to deny her importance, or to insist on the utter 
hopelessness of her advancement. The Baconian 
method will not probably push forward her disco- 
veries with such a rapidity, or to such an extent, as 
many of her sanguine disciples have anticipated. 
But if the spirit and the maxims of this philosophy 
were at all times proceeded upon, it would certainly 



AMONG THE HIGHER INTELLIGENCES. 135 

check that rashness and variety of excogitation, in 
virtue of which it may almost be said, that every 
new course presents us with a new system, and that 
every new teacher has some singularity or other to 
characterize him. She may be able to make out an 
exact transcript of the phenomena of mind, and in 
so doing, she yields a most important contribution 
to the stock of human acquirements. But, when she 
attempts to grope her darkling way through the 
counsels of the Deity, and the futurities of His ad- 
ministration ; when, without one passing acknow- 
ledgment to the embassy which professes to have 
come from him, or to the facts and to the testimonies 
by which it has so illustriously been vindicated, she 
launches forth her own speculations on the character 
of God, and the destiny of man ; when, though this 
be a subject on which neither the recollections of 
history, nor the ephemeral experience of any single 
life, can furnish one observation to enlighten her, 
she will nevertheless utter her own plausibilities, not 
merely with a contemptuous neglect of the Bible^ 
but in direct opposition to it ; then it is high time 
to remind her of the difference between the reverie 
of him who has not seen God, and the well-accredited 
declaration of Him who was in the beginning with 
God, and was God ; and to tell her, that this, so far 
from being the argument of an ignoble fanaticism, 
is in harmony with the very argument upon which 
the science of experiment has been reared, and by 
which it has been at length delivered from the influ- 
ence of theory, and purified of all its vain and vision- 
ary splendours. 

In our last Discourses, we have attempted to col- 



136 



CONTEST FOR ASCENDENCY OVEli MAN 



lect, from the records of God's actual communication 
to the world, such traces of relationship between 
other orders of being and the great family of man- 
kind, as serve to prove that Christianity is not so 
paltry and provincial a system as Infidelity presumes 
it to be. And as we said before, we have not ex- 
hausted all that may legitimately be derived upon 
this subject from the informations of Scripture. We 
have adverted, it is true, to the knowledge of our 
moral history which obtains throughout other pro- 
vinces of the intelligent creation. We have asserted 
the universal importance which this may confer on 
the transactions even of one planet, in as much as it 
may spread an honourable display of the Godhead 
amongst all the mansions of infinity. ' We have at- 
tempted to expatiate on the argument, that an event 
little in itself, may be so pregnant with character, as 
to furnish all the worshippers of heaven with a theme 
of praise for eternity. We have stated that nothing 
is of magnitude in their eyes, but that which serves 
to endear to them the Father of their spirits, or to 
shed a lustre over the glory of His incomprehensible 
attributes — and that thus, from the redemption even 
of our solitary species, there may go forth such an 
exhibition of the Deity, as shall bear the triumphs 
of His name to the very outskirts of the universe. 

We have farther adverted to another distinct 
Scriptural intimation, that the state of fallen man 
was not only matter of knowledge to other orders of 
creation, but was also matter of deep regret and 
affectionate sympathy; that agreeably to such laws 
of sympathy as are most familiar even to human ob- 
servation, the very wretchedness of our condition was 



AMONG THE HIGHER INTELLIGENCES. 



1ST 



fitted to concentrate upon us the feelings, and the 
attentions, and the services of the celestial — to single 
us out for a time to the gaze of their most earnest 
and unceasing contemplation — to draw forth all that 
was kind and all that was tender within them — and 
just in proportion to the need and to the helpless- 
ness of us miserable exiles from the family of God ? 
to multiply upon us the regards, and call out in our 
behalf the fond and eager exertions of those who had 
never wandered away from Him. This appears from 
the Bible to be the style of that benevolence which 
glows and which circulates around the throne of 
heaven. It is the very benevolence which emanates 
from the throne itself, and the attentions of which 
have for so many thousand years signalized the in- 
habitants of our world. This may look a long period 
for so paltry a world. But how have Infidels come 
to their conception that our world is so paltry ? By 
looking abroad over the countless systems of im- 
mensity. But why then have they missed the con- 
ception, that the time of those peculiar visitations, 
which they look upon as so disproportionate to the 
magnitude of this earth, is just as evanescent as the 
earth itself is insignificant ? Why look they not 
abroad on the countless generations of eternity ; and 
thus come back to the conclusion, that after all, the 
redemption of our species is but an ephemeral doing 
in the history of intelligent nature ; that it leaves 
the Author of it room for all the accomplishments of 
a wise and equal administration ; and not to mention^ 
that even during the progress of it, it withdraws not 
a single thought or a single energy of His, from 
other fields of creation, that there remains time 



138 



CONTEST FOR ASCENDENCY OVER MAN 



enough to Him for carrying* round the visitations of 
as striking and as peculiar a tenderness, over the 
whole extent of His great and universal monarchy ? 

It might serve still farther to incorporate the con- 
cerns of our planet with the general history of moral 
and intelligent beings, to state, not merely the know- 
ledge which they take of us, and not merely the com- 
passionate anxiety which they feel for us; but to 
state the importance derived to our world from its 
being the actual theatre of a keen and ambitious 
contest amongst the upper orders of creation. You 
know that for the possession of a very small and in- 
sulated territory, the mightiest empires of the world 
have put forth all their resources ; and on some field 
of mustering competition, have monarchs met, and 
embarked for victory, all the pride of a country's 
talent, and all the flower and strength of a country's 
population. The solitary island around which so 
many fleets are hovering, and on the shores of which 
so many armed men are descending as to an arena 
of hostility, may well wonder at its own unlooked- 
for estimation. But other principles are animating 
the battle ; and the glory of nations is at stake ; and 
a much higher result is in the contemplation of each 
party, than the gain of so humble an acquirement as 
the primary object of the war; and honour, dearer 
to many a bosom than # existenee, is now the interest 
on which so much blood and so much treasure is ex- 
pended ; and the stirring spirit of emulation has now 
got hold of the combatants ; and thus, amid all the 
insignificancy which attaches to the material ori- 
gin of the contest, do both the eagerness and 
the extent of it, receive from the constitution of 



AMONG THE HIGHER INTELLIGENCES. 



139 



our nature, their most full and adequate explana- 
tion. 

~Now, if this be also the principle of higher natures 
— if, on the one hand, God he jealous of his honour; 
and, on the other, there be proud and exalted spirits 
who scowl defiance at Him and at His monarchy — 
if, on the side of heaven, there be an angelic host 
rallying around the standard of loyalty, who flee with 
alacrity at the bidding of the Almighty, w T ho are de- 
voted to His glory, and feel a rejoicing interest in the 
evolution of His counsels ; and if, on the side of hell, 
there be a sullen front of resistance, a hate and ma- 
lice inextinguishable, an unquelled daring of revenge 
to baffle the wisdom of the Eternal, and to arrest the 
hand, and to defeat the purposes of Omnipotence- — 
then let the material prize of victory be insignificant 
as it may, it is the victory in itself which upholds 
the impulse of this keen and stimulated rivalry. If, 
by the sagacity of one infernal mind, a single planet 
has been seduced from its allegiance, and been 
brought under the ascendency of him who is called 
in Scripture, " the god of this world and if the 
errand on which our Redeemer came was to destroy 
the works of the devil — then let this planet have all 
the littleness which astronomy has assigned to it — 
call it what it is, one of the smaller islets which float 
on the ocean of vacancy ; it has become the theatre 
of such a competition, as may have all the desires 
and all the energies of a divided universe embarked 
upon it. It involves in it other objects than the 
single recovery of our species. It decides higher 
questions. It stands linked with the supremacy of 
God, and will at length demonstrate the way in 



no 



CONTEST FOR ASCENDENCY OVEU MAN 



which He inflicts chastisement and overthrow upon 
all His enemies. We know not if our rebellious 
world be the only stronghold which Satan is possess- 
ed of, or if it be but the single post of an extended 
warfare, that is now going on between the powers of 
light and of darkness. But be it the one or the 
other, the parties are in array, and the spirit of the 
contest is in full energy, and the honour of mighty 
combatants is at stake ; and let us therefore cease 
to wonder that our humble residence has been made 
the theatre of so busy ^n operation, or that the am- 
bition of loftier natures has here put forth all its de- 
sire and all its strenuousness. 

This unfolds to us another of those high and ex- 
tensive bearings, which the moral history of our globe 
may have on the system of God's universal admini- 
stration. Were an enemy to touch the shore of this 
high-minded country, and to occupy so much as one 
of the humblest of its villages, and there to seduce 
the natives from their loyalty, and to sit down along 
with them in entrenched defiance to all the threats, 
and to all the preparations of an insulted empire — 
oh how would the cry of wounded pride resound 
throughout all the ranks and varieties of our mighty 
population ; and this very movement of indignancy 
would reach the king upon his throne ; and circulate 
among those who stood in all the grandeur of chief- 
tainship around him ; and be heard to thrill in the 
eloquence of Parliament ; and spread so resistless an 
appeal to a nation's honour and a nation's patriot- 
ism, that the trumpet of war would summon to its 
call all the spirit and all the willing energies of our 
kingdom ; and rather than sit down in patient en- 



AMONG THE HIGHER INTELLIGENCES. 



141 



durance under the burning disgrace of such a viola- 
tion, would the whole of its strength and resources 
be embarked upon the contest ; and never, never 
would we let down our exertions and our sacrifices, 
till either our deluded countrymen were reclaimed, 
or till the whole of this offence were, by one right- 
eous act of vengeance, swept away altogether from 
the face of the territory it deformed. 

The Bible is always most full and most explan- 
atory on those points of revelation in which men are 
personally interested. But it does at times offer a 
dim transparency, through which may be caught a 
partial view of such designs and of such enterprises 
as are now afloat among the upper orders of intelli- 
gence. It tells us of a mighty struggle that is now 
going on for a moral ascendency over the hearts of 
this world's population. It tells us that our race 
were seduced from their allegiance to God, by the 
plotting sagacity r of one who stands pre-eminent 
against Him among the hosts of a very wide and 
extended rebellion. It tells us of the Captain of 
salvation, who undertook to spoil him of this 
triumph ; and throughout the whole of that magni- 
ficent train of prophecy which points to Him, does 
it describe the work he had to do, as a conflict, in 
which strength was to be put forth, and painful 
suffering to be endured, and fury to be poured upon 
enemies, and principalities to be dethroned, and all 
those toils, and dangers, and difficulties to be borne, 
which strewed the path of perseverance that was to 
carry him to victory. 

But it is a contest of skill as well as of strength 
and of influence. There is the earnest competition 



112 



CONTEST FOR ASCENDENCY OYER MAN 



of angelic faculties embarked on this struggle for as- 
cendency. And while in the Bible there is recorded 
(faintly and partially, we admit) the deep and insi- 
dious policy that is practised on the one side; we are 
also told, that, on the plan of our world's restoration, 
there are lavished all the riches of an unsearchable 
wisdom upon the other. It would appear that, for 
the accomplishment of his purpose, the great enemy 
of Grod and of man plied his every calculation ; and 
brought all the devices of his deep and settled ma- 
lignity to bear upon our species ; and thought, that 
could he involve us in sin, every attribute of the 
Divinity stood staked to the banishment of our race 
from beyond the limits of the empire of righteous- 
ness ; and, thus did he practise his invasions on the 
moral territory of the unfallen ; and, glorying in his 
success, did he fancy and feel that he had achieved 
a permanent separation between the God who sitteth 
in heaven, and one at least of the planetary mansions 
which He had reared. 

The errand of the Saviour was to restore this sin- 
ful world, and have its people readmitted within the 
circle of heaven's pure and righteous family. But in 
the government of heaven, as well as in the govern- 
ment of earth, there are certain principles which can- 
not be compromised ; and certain maxims of admini- 
stration which must never be departed from ; and a 
certain character of majesty and of truth, on which 
the taint even of the slightest violation can never be 
permitted ; and a certain authority which must be up- 
held by the immutability of all its sanctions, and the 
Unerring fulfilment of all its wise and righteous pro- 
clamations. All this was in the mind of the arch- 



AMONG THE HIGHER INTELLIGENCES. 143 



angel, and a gleam of malignant joy shot athwart him, 
as he conceived his project for hemming our unfor- 
tunate species within the bound of an irrecoverable 
dilemma ; and as surely as sin and holiness could 
not enter into fellowship, so surely did he think, that 
if man were seduced to disobedience, would the truth, 
and the justice, and the immutability of God, lay 
their insurmountable barriers on the path of his 
future acceptance. 

It was only in that plan of recovery of which Jesus 
Christ was the author and the finisher, that the great 
adversary of our species met with a wisdom which 
overmatched him. It is true, that he had reared, in 
the guilt to which he seduced us, a mighty obstacle 
in the way of this lofty undertaking. But when the 
grand expedient was announced, and the blood of 
that atonement, by which sinners are brought nigh, 
was willingly offered to be shed for us ; and the 
eternal Son, to carry this mystery into accomplish- 
ment, assumed our nature — then was the prince of 
that mighty rebellion, in which the fate and the 
history of our world are so deeply implicated, in vis- 
ible alarm for the safety of all his acquisitions : — nor 
can the record of this wondrous history carry forward 
its narrative, without furnishing some transient 
glimpses of a sublime and a superior warfare, in 
which, for the prize of a spiritual dominion over our 
species, we may dimly perceive the contest of loftiest 
talent, and all the designs of heaven in behalf of 
man, met at every point of their evolution, by the 
counterworkings of a rival strength and a rival sa- 
gacity. 

We there read of a struggle which the Captain of 



144 CONTEST FOR ASCENDENCY OVER MAN 



our salvation had to sustain, when the lustre of the 
Godhead lay obscured, and the strength of its omni- 
potence was mysteriously weighed down under the 
infirmities of our nature — how Satan singled Him 
out, and dared Him to the combat of the wilderness 
— how all his wiles and all his influences were resist- 
ed — how he left our Saviour in ail the triumphs of 
unsubdued loyalty — how the progress of this mighty 
achievement is marked by the every character of a 
conflict — how many of the gospel miracles were so 
many direct infringements on the power and empire of 
a great spiritual rebellion— how, in one precious sea- 
son of gladness among the few which brightened the 
dark career of our Saviour's humiliation, He rejoiced 
in spirit, and gave as the cause of it to His disciples 
that " He saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven" 
—how the momentary advantages that were gotten 
over Him, are ascribed to the agency of this infer- 
nal being, who entered the heart of Judas, and 
tempted the disciple to betray his Master and his 
Friend. We know that we are treading on the con- 
fines of mystery. We cannot tell what the battle 
that He fought. We cannot compute the terror or 
the strength of His enemies. Wc cannot say, for we 
have not been told, how it was that they stood in 
marshalled and hideous array against Him : — nor 
can wc measure how great the firm daring of His 
soul, when He tasted that cup in all its bitterness, 
which He prayed might pass away from Him ; when, 
with the feeling that He was forsaken by His God, 
He trod the wine-press alone ; when He entered 
single-handed upon that dreary period of agony, and 
insult, and death, in which, from the garden to the 



AMONG THE HIGHER INTELLIGENCES. 



145 



cross, He had to bear the burden of a world's atone- 
ment, We cannot speak in our own language, but 
we can say, in the language of the Bible, of the days 
and the nights of this great enterprise, that it was 
the season of the travail of His soul ; that it was 
the hour and the power of darkness ; that the work 
of our redemption, was a work accompanied by the 
effort, and the violence, and the fury of a combat ; by 
all the arduousness of a battle in its progress, and 
all the glories of a victory in its termination : and 
after He called out that it was finished, after He 
was loosed from the prison-house of the grave, after 
He had ascended up on high, He is said to have made 
captivity captive ; and to have spoiled principalities 
and powers ; and to have seen His pleasure upon His 
enemies ; and to have made a show of them openly, 
We shall not affect a wisdom above that which is 
written, by fancying such details of this warfare as 
the Bible has not laid before us. But surely it is no 
more than being wise up to that which is written, to 
assert, that in achieving the redemption of our world, 
a warfare had to be accomplished ; that upon this 
subject there was, among the higher provinces of 
creation, the keen and the animated conflict of op- 
posing interests ; that the result of it involved some- 
thing grander and more affecting than even the 
fate of this world's population ; that it decided a 
question of rivalship between the righteous and ever^ 
lasting Monarch of universal being, and the prince 
of a great and widely-extended rebellion, of which 
we neither know how vast is the magnitude, nor how 
important and diversified are the bearings : and 
thus do w^e gather, from this consideration, another 

7 K 



146 



CONTEST FOR ASCENDENCY OVER MAN 



distinct argument, helping us to explain why, on the 
salvation of our solitary species, so much attention 
appears to have been concentrated, and so much 
energy appears to have been expended. 

But it would appear from the Records of Inspira- 
tion, that the contest is not yet ended ; that on the 
one hand the Spirit of God is employed in making, 
for the truths of Christianity, a way into the human 
heart, with all the power of an effectual demonstra- 
tion ; that on the other, there is a spirit now abroad, 
which worketh in the children of disobedience : that 
on the one hand, the Holy Ghost is calling men out 
of darkness into the marvellous light of the Gospel; 
and that on the other hand, he who is styled the 
god of this world, is blinding their hearts, lest the 
light of the glorious Gospel of Christ should enter 
into them : that they who are under the dominion 
of the one, are said to have overcome, because greater 
is He that is in them than he that is in the world; 
and that they who are under the dominion of the 
other, are said to be the children of the devil, and 
to be under his snare, and to be taken captive by him 
at his will. How these respective powers do operate, 
is one question ; the fact of their operation, is an- 
other. We abstain from the former. We attach 
ourselves to the latter, and gather from it, that the 
prince of darkness still walketli abroad amongst us; 
that he is still working his insidious policy, if not 
with the vigorous inspiration of hope, at least with 
the frantic energies of despair ; that while the over- 
tures of reconciliation are made to circulate through 
the world, he is plying all his devices to deafen and 
to extinguish the impression of them; or, in other 



AMONG THE HIGHER INTELLIGENCES. 



147 



words, while a process of invitation and of argument 
has emanated from heaven, for reclaiming men to 
their loyalty — the process is resisted at all its points, 
by one who is putting forth his every expedient, and 
wielding a mysterious ascendency, to seduce, and to 
enthral them. 

To an infidel ear, all this carries the sound of 
something wild and visionary along with it. But 
though only known through the medium of revela- 
tion ; after it is known, who can fail to recognise its 
harmony with the great lineaments of human experi- 
ence ? Who has not felt the workings of a rivalry 
within him, between the power of conscience and 
the power of temptation? Who does not remember 
those seasons of retirement, when the calculations 
of eternity had gotten a momentary command over 
the heart ; and time, with all its interests and all its 
vexations, had dwindled into insignificancy before 
them ? And who does not remember, how, upon his 
actual engagement with the objects of time, they re- 
sumed a control, as great and as omnipotent, as if all 
the importance of eternity adhered to them — how 
they emitted from them such an impression upon 
his feelings, as to fix and to fascinate the whole man 
into a subserviency to their influence — how in spite 
of every lesson of their worthlessness, brought home 
to him at every turn by the rapidity of the seasons, 
and the vicissitudes of life, and the ever-moving 
progress of his own earthly career, and the visible 
ravages of death among his acquaintances around 
him, and the desolations of his family, and the con- 
stant breaking up of his system of friendships, and the 
affecting spectacle of all that lives and is in motion. 



148 



CONTEST FOR ASCENDENCY OVER MAN 



withering and hastening to the grave; — oh! how 
comes it, that, in the face of all this experience, the 
whole elevation of purpose, conceived in the hour of 
his better understanding, should be dissipated and 
forgotten ? Whence the might, and whence the mys- 
tery of that spell, which so binds and so infatuates us 
to the world ? What prompts us so to embark the 
whole strength of our eagerness and of our desires, 
in pursuit of interests which we know a few little 
years will bring to utter annihilation ? Who is it 
that imparts to them all the charm and all the colour 
of an unfailing durability? Who is it that throws 
such an air of stability over these earthly tabernacles, 
as makes them look to the fascinated eye of man, 
like resting-places for eternity ? Who is it that so 
pictures out the objects of sense, and so magnifies 
the range of their future enjoyment, and so dazzles 
the fond and deceived imagination, that, in looking 
onward through our earthly career, it appears like 
the vista, or the perspective, of innumerable ages ? 
He who is called the god of this world. He who can 
dress the idleness of its waking dreams in the garb of 
reality. He who can pour a seducing brilliancy over 
the panorama of its fleeting pleasures and its vain 
anticipations. He who can turn it into an in- 
strument of deceitfulness, and make it wield such 
an absolute ascendency over all the affections, 
that man, become the poor slave of its idolatries 
and its charms, puts the authority of conscience 
and the warnings of the Word of God, and the 
offered instigations of the Spirit of God, and all 
the lessons of calculation, and all the wisdom even of 
his own sound and sober experience, away from him. 



AMONG THE HIGHER INTELLIGENCES. 



149 



But this wondrous contest will come to a close. 
Some will return to their loyalty, and others will 
keep by their rebellion; and, in the day of the wind- 
ing up of the drama of this world's history, there will 
be made manifest to the myriads of the various 
orders of creation, both the mercy and vindicated 
majesty of the Eternal. Oh! on that day, how vain 
will this presumption of the infidel astronomy ap- 
pear, when the affairs of men come to be exa mined in 
the presence of an innumerable company ; and beings 
of loftiest nature are seen to crowd around the judg- 
ment-seat ; and the Saviour shall appear in our sky, 
with a celestial retinue, who have come with liim 
from afar to witness all his doings, and to take a 
deep and solemn interest in all His dispensations ; 
and the destiny of our species whom the Infidel 
would thus detach in solitary insignificance, from 
the universe altogether, shall be found to merge and 
to mingle with higher destinies — the good to spend 
their eternity with angels — the bad to spend their 
eternity with angels — the former to be readmitted 
into the universal family of God's obedient worship- 
pers — the latter to share in the everlasting pain 
and ignominy of the defeated host of the rebellious 
— the people of this planet to be implicated, through- 
out the whole train of their never-ending history, 
with the higher ranks and the more extended 
tribes of intelligence : And thus it is, that the 
special administration w r e now live under, shall be 
seen to harmonize in its bearings, and to accord 
in its magnificence, with all that extent of nature 
and of her territories, which modern science has 
unfolded. 



150 



SLENDER INFLUENCE OF TASTE 



DISCOURSE VII. 

ON THE SLENDER INFLUENCE OF MERE TASTE AND 
SENSIBILITY IN MATTERS OP RELIGION. 



" And, Io ! thou art unto them as a very lovely song of one that 
hath a pleasant voice, and can play well on an instrument: for they 
hear thy words, but they do them not." — Ezck. xxxiii. 32. 

You easily understand how a taste for music is one 
thing, and a real submission to the influence of re- 
ligion is another — how the ear may be regaled by 
the melody of sound, and the heart may utterly re- 
fuse the proper impression of the sense that is con- 
veyed by it — how the sons and daughters of the world 
may, with their every affection devoted to its perish- 
able vanities, inhale all the delights of enthusiasm, 
as they sit in crowded assemblage around the deep 
and solemn oratorio — ay, and whether it be the humi- 
lity of penitential feeling, or the rapture of grateful 
acknowledgment, or the sublime of a contemplative 
piety, or the aspiration of pure and of holy purposes, 
which breathes throughout the words of the perform- 
ance, and gives to it all the spirit and all the ex- 
pression by which it is pervaded, it is a very pos- 
sible thing, that the moral, and the rational, and the 
active man, may have given no en (ranee into his 
bosom for any of these sentiments ; and yet so over- 



IN MATTERS OF RELIGION. 



151 



powered may he be by the charm of the vocal con- 
veyance through which they are addressed to him, 
that he may be made to feel with such an emotion, 
and to weep with such a tenderness, and to kindle 
with such a transport, and to glow with such an ele- 
vation, as may one and all carry upon them the 
semblance of sacredness. 

But might not this semblance deceive him? Have 
you ever heard any tell, and with complacency too, 
how powerfully his devotion was awakened by an 
act of attendance on the oratorio — how his heart, 
melted and subdued by the influence of harmony, 
did homage to all the religion of which it was the 
vehicle — how he was so moved and overborne, as to 
shed the tears of contrition, and to be agitated by 
the terrors of judgment, and to receive an awe upon 
his spirit of the greatness and the majesty of God — 
and that, wrought up to the lofty pitch of eternity, 
he could look down upon the world, and by the 
glance of one commanding survey, pronounce upon 
the littleness and the vanity of all its concerns ? It is 
indeed very possible that all this might thrill upon 
the ears of the man, and circulate a succession of 
solemn and affecting images around his fancy — and 
yet that essential principle of his nature, upon which 
the practical influence of Christianity turns, might 
have met with no reaching and no subduing efficacy 
whatever to arouse it. He leaves the exhibition, 
as dead in trespasses and sins as he came to it 
Conscience has not wakened upon him. Repent- 
ance has not turned him. Faith has not made any 
positive lodgement within him of her great and her 
constraining realities. He speeds him back to his 



152 



SLENDER INFLUENCE OF TASTE 



business and to Lis family, and there he acts the old 
man in all the entireness of his uncrucified temper, 
and of his obstinate worldliness, and of all those 
earthly and un sanctified affections which are found 
to cleave to him with as great tenacity as ever. 
He is really and experimentally the very same man 
as before — and all those sensibilities which seemed 
to bear upon them so much of the air and unction 
of heaven, are found to go into dissipation, and be 
forgotten with the loveliness of the song. 

Amid all that illusion which such momentary 
visitations of seriousness and of sentiment throw 
around the character of man, let us never lose sight 
of the test, that "by their fruits ye shall know them/' 
It is not coming up to this test, that you hear and 
are delighted. It is that you hear and do. This is 
the ground upon which the reality of your religion 
is discriminated now ; and on the day of reckoning, 
this is the ground upon which your religion will be 
judged then ; and that award is to be passed upon 
you, which will fix and perpetuate your destiny for 
ever. You have a taste for music. This no more 
implies the hold and the ascendency of religion over 
you, than that you have a taste for beautiful scenery, 
or a taste for painting, or even a taste for the sen- 
sualities of epicurism. But music may be made to 
express the glow and the movement of devotional 
feeling; and is it saying nothing to say that the heart 
of him who listens with a raptured ear is, through 
the whole time of the performance, in harmony with 
such a movement ? Why, it is saying nothing to the 
purpose. Music may lift the inspiring note of pa- 
triotism; and the inspiration may be felt; and it may 



IN MATTERS OF RELIGION. 



153 



thrill over the recesses of the sou], to the mustering 
up of all its energies; and it may sustain to the last 
cadence of the song, the firm nerve and purpose of 
intrepidity ; and all this may be realized upon him, 
who, in the day of battle, and upon actual collision 
with the dangers of it, turns out to be a coward. And 
music may lull the feelings into unison with piety ; 
and stir up the inner man to 'lofty determinations ; 
and so engage for a time his affections, that, as if 
weaned from the dust, they promise an immediate en- 
trance on some great and elevated career, which may 
carry him through his pilgrimage superior to all the 
sordid and grovelling enticements that abound in it. 
But he turns him to the world, and all this glow aban- 
dons him ; and the words which he had heard, he 
doeth them not ; and in the hour of temptation he 
turns out to be a deserter from the law of allegi- 
ance ; and the test we have now specified looks hard 
upon him, and discriminates him amid all the parad- 
ing insignificance of his fine but fugitive emotions, 
to be the subject both of present guilt and of future 
vengeance. 

The faithful application of this test would put to 
flight a host of other delusions. It may be carried 
round amongst all those phenomena of human char- 
acter, where there is the exhibition of something 
associated with religion, but which is not religion 
itself. An exquisite relish for music is no test of the 
influence of Christianity; neither are many other 
of the exquisite sensibilities of our nature. When 
a kind mother closes the eyes of her expiring babe, 
she is thrown into a flood of sensibility, and soothing 
to her heart are the sympathy and the prayers of an 



1 ")4 SLENDER INFLUENCE OF TASTE 

attending- minister. When a gathering neighbour- 
hood assemble to the funeral of an acquaintance, 
one pervading sense of regret and tenderness sits on 
the faces of the company ; and the deep silence, 
broken only by the solemn utterance of the man of 
God, carries a hind of pleasing religiousness along 
with it. The sacrednoss of the hallowed day, and all 
the decencies of its observation, may engage the 
affections of him who loves to walk in the footsteps 
of his father ; and every recurring Sabbath may 
bring to his bosom the charm of its regularity and 
its quietness. Religion has its accompaniments ; 
and in these there may be a something to soothe and 
to fascinate, even in the absence of the appropriate 
influences of religion. The deep and tender impres- 
sion of a family bereavement, is not religion. The 
love of established decencies, is not religion. The 
charm of all that sentimentalism which is associated 
with many of its solemn and affecting services, is not 
religion. They may form the distinct folds of its 
accustomed drapery ; but they do not, any, or all of 
them put together, make up the substance of the 
thing itself. A mothers tenderness may flow most 
gracefully over the tomb of her departed little one ; 
and she may talk the while of that heaven whither 
its spirit has ascended. The man whom death had 
widowed of his friend, may abandon himself to the 
movements of that grief, which for a time will claim 
an ascendency over him ; and, amongst the multi- 
tude of his other reveries, may love to hear of the 
eternity, where sorrow and separation are alike un- 
known. He who has been trained from his infant 
days to remember the Sabbath, may love the holiness 



IN MATTERS OF RELIGION. 



155 



of its aspect, and associate himself with all its ob- 
servances, and take a delighted share in the mechan- 
ism of its forms. But let not these think, because 
the tastes and the sensibilities which engross them, 
may be blended with religion, that they indicate 
either its strength or its existence within them. 
We recur to the test. "We press its imperious exac- 
tions upon you. We call for fruit, and demand the 
permanency of a religious influence on the habits 
and the history. How many who take a flattering 
unction to their souls, when they think of their 
amiable feelings, and their becoming observations, 
with whom this severe touchstone would, like the 
head of Medusa, put to flight all their complacency ! 
The afflictive dispensation is forgotten — and he on 
whom it was laid, is practically as indifferent to God 
and to eternity as before. The Sabbath services 
come to a close, and they are followed by the same 
routine of week-day worldliness as before. In neither 
the one case nor the other, do we see more of the 
radical influence of Christianity, than in the sublime 
and melting influence of sacred music upon the soul ; 
and all this tide of emotion is found to die away 
from the bosom, like the pathos or like the loveliness 
of a song. 

The instances may be multiplied without number. 
A man may have a taste for eloquence, and elo- 
quence, the most touching or sublime, may lift her 
pleading voice on the side of religion. A man may 
love to have his understanding stimulated by the 
ingenuities or the resistless urgencies of an ar- 
gument ; and argument the most profound and the 
most overbearing may put forth all the might of a 



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constraining vehemence in behalf of religion. A 
man may feel the rejoicings of a conscious elevation, 
when some ideal scene of magnificence is laid before 
him ; and where are these scenes so readily to be 
met with, as when led to expatiate in thought over 
the track of eternity, or to survey the wonders of 
creation, or to look to the magnitude of those great 
and universal interests which lie within the compass 
of religion ? A man may have his attention rivetted 
and regaled by that power of imitative description, 
which brings all the recollections of his own experi- 
ence before him ; which presents him w T ith a faith- 
ful analysis of his own heart ; which embodies in 
language such intimacies of observation and of feel- 
ing, as have often passed before his eyes, or played 
within his bosom, but had never been so truly or so 
ably pictured to the view of his remembrance. Now, 
all this may be done in the work of pressing the 
duties of religion ; in the work of instancing the 
applications of religion ; in the work of pointing 
those allusions to life and to manners, which mani- 
fest the truth to the conscience, and plant such a 
conviction of sin, as forms the very basis of a sinner's 
religion. Now, in all these cases, we see other prin- 
ciples brought into action, and which may be in a 
state of most lively and vigorous movement, and be 
yet in a state of entire separation from the principle 
of religion. We will venture to say, on the strength 
of these illustrations, that as much delight may 
emanate from the pulpit on an arrested audience 
beneath it, as ever emanated from the boards of a 
theatre — ay, and with as total a disjunction of mind 
too, in the one case as in the other, from the essence or 



IN MATTERS OF RELIGION. 



157 



the habit of religion. We recur to the test. We make 
our appeal to experience ; and we put it to you all, 
whether your finding upon the subject do not agree 
with our saying about it, that a man may weep and 
admire, and have many of his faculties put upon 
the stretch of their most intense gratification — his 
judgment established, and his fancy enlivened, and 
his feelings overpowered, and his hearing charmed 
as by the accents of heavenly persuasion, and all 
within him feasted by the rich and varied luxuries 
of an intellectual banquet ! — Oh ! it is cruel to frown 
unmannerly in the midst of so much satisfaction. 
But I must not forget that truth has her authority, 
as well as her sternness ; and she forces me to affirm, 
that after all this has been felt and gone through, 
there might not be one principle which lies at the 
turning-point of conversion, that has experienced a 
single movement — not one of its purposes be con- 
ceived — not one of its doings be accomplished — not 
one step of that repentance, which if we have not 
we perish, so much as entered upon — not one an- 
nouncement of that faith, by which we are saved, 
admitted into a real and actual possession by the 
inner man. He has had his hour's entertainment, 
and willingly does he award this homage to the per- 
former, that he hath a pleasant voice and can play 
well on an instrument — but, in another hour it fleets 
away from his remembrance, and goes all to nothing, 
like the loveliness of a song. 

Now, in bringing these Discourses to a close, we 
feel it our duty to advert to this exhibition of char- 
acter in man. The sublime and interesting topic 
which has engaged us, however feebly it may have 



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been handled ; however inadequately it may have 
been put in all its worth, and in all its magnitude 
before you ; however short the representation of the 
speaker, or the conception of the hearers, may have 
been of that richness, and that greatness, and that 
loftiness, which belong to it ; possesses in itself a 
charm to fix the attention, and to regale the imagina- 
tion, and to subdue the whole man into a delighted 
reverence ; and, in a word, to beget such a solemnity 
of thought and of emotion, as may occupy and en- 
large the soul for hours together, as may waft it 
away from the grossness of ordinary life, and raise 
it to a kind of elevated calm above all its vulgarities 
and all its vexations. 

Now, tell us whether the whole of this effect upon 
the feelings may not be formed without the presence 
of religion. Tell us whether there might not be 
such a constitution of mind, that it may both want 
altogether that principle, in virtue of which the 
doctrines of Christianity are admitted into the belief, 
and the duties of Christianity arc admitted into a 
government over the practice — and yet at the very 
same time, it may have the faculty of looking abroad 
over some scene of magnificence, and of being 
wrought up to ecstasy with the sense of all those 
glories among which it is expatiating. We want 
you to see clearly the distinction between these two 
attributes of the human character. They are, in 
truth, as different the one from the other, as a taste 
for the grand and the graceful in scenery differs 
from the appetite of hunger ; and the one may both 
exist and have a most intense operation within tho 
bosom of that very individual, who entirely disowns 



IN MATTERS OF RELIGION. 



159 



and is entirely disgusted with the other. What ! 
must a man be converted, ere, from the most ele- 
vated peak of some Alpine wilderness, he become 
capable of feeling the force and the majesty of those 
great lineaments which the hand of nature has 
thrown around him, in the varied forms of precipice, 
and mountain, and the wave of mighty forests, and 
the rush of sounding waterfalls, and distant glimpses 
of human territory, and pinnacles of everlasting snow, 
and the sweep of that circling horizon, which folds 
in its ample embrace the whole of this noble amphi- 
theatre ? Tell us whether, without the aid of Chris- 
tianity, or without a particle of reverence for the 
only Name given under heaven whereby men can be 
saved, a man may not kindle at such a perspective 
as this, into all the raptures, and into all the move- 
ments of a poetic elevation ; and be able to render 
into the language of poetry, the whole of that sublime 
and beauteous imagery which adorns it? and, as if 
he were treading on the confines of a sanctuary 
which he has not entered, may he not mix up with 
the power and the enchantment of his description, 
such allusions to the presiding genius of the scene ; 
or to the still but animating spirit of the solitude; 
or to the speaking silence of some mysterious char- 
acter which reigns throughout the landscape ; or, 
in fine, to that Eternal Spirit, who sits behind 
the elements He has formed, and combines them 
into all the varieties of a wide and a wondrous crea- 
tion? might not all this be said and sung with an 
emphasis so moving as to spread the colouring of 
piety over the pages of him who performs thus well 
upon his instrument ; and yet, the performer himself 



IGO 



SLENDER INFLUENCE OF TASTE 



have a conscience unmoved by a single warning of 
God's actual communication, and the judgment un- 
convinced, and the fears unawakened, and the life 
unreformed by it ? 

Now, what is true of a scene on earth, is also 
true of that wider and more elevated scene which 
stretches over the immensity around it, into a dark 
and a distant unknown. Who does not feel an 
aggrandizement of thought and of faculty, when he 
looks abroad over the amplitudes of creation — when, 
placed on a telescopic eminence, his aided eye can 
find a pathway to innumerable worlds — when that 
wondrous field, over which there had hung for many 
ages the mantle of so deep an obscurity, is laid open 
to him, and, instead of a dreary and unpeopled soli- 
tude, he can see over the whole face of it such an 
extended garniture of rich and goodly habitations ? 
Even the Atheist, who tells us that the universe is 
self-existent and indestructible — even he, who in- 
stead of seeing the traces of a manifold wisdom in 
its manifold varieties, sees nothing in them all but 
the exquisite structures and the lofty dimensions of 
materialism — even he, who would despoil creation 
of its God, cannot look upon its golden suns, and 
their accompanying systems, without the solemn im- 
pression of a magnificence that fixes and overpowers 
him. Now, conceive such a belief of God as you all 
profess to dawn upon his understanding. Let him 
become as one of yourselves — and so be put into the 
condition of rising from the sublime of matter to the 
sublime of mind. Let him now learn to subordi- 
nate the whole of this mechanism to the design 
and authority of a great presiding Intelligence: 



IN MATTERS OF RELIGION. 



161 



and re-assembling all the members of the universe, 
however distant, into one family, let him mingle with 
his formerconceptions of the grandeurwhich belonged 
to it, the conception of that Eternal Spirit who sits 
enthroned on the immensity of His own wonders, and 
embraces all that He has made, within the ample 
scope of one great administration. Then will the 
images and the impressions of sublimity come in upon 
him from a new quarter. Then will another avenue 
be opened, through which a sense of grandeur may 
find its way into his soul, and have a mightier influ- 
ence than ever to fill, and to elevate, and to expand it. 
Then will be established a new and a noble associa- 
tion, by the aid of which all that he formerly looked 
upon as fair, becomes more lovely ; and all that he 
formerly looked upon as great, becomes more magni- 
ficent. But will you believe us, that even with this 
accession to his mind of ideas gathered from the con- 
templation of the Divinity ; even with that pleasur- 
able glow which steals over his imagination, when he 
now thinks of the majesty of God ; even with as much 
of what you would call piety, as we fear is enough to 
soothe and to satisfy many of yourselves, and which 
stirs and kindles within you when you hear the goings 
forth of the Supreme set before you in the terms of 
a lofty representation ; even with all this, we say 
there may be as wide a distance from the habit and 
the character of godliness, as if God was still atheis- 
tically disowned by him. Take the conduct of his 
life and the currency of his affections ; and you may 
see as little upon them of the stamp of loyalty to God, 
or of reverence for any one of his authenticated 
proclamations, as you may see in him who offers his 

7 L 



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SLENDER INFLUENCE OF TASTE 



poetic incense to the genii, or weeps enraptured over 
the visions of a beauteous mythology. The sublime 
of Deity has wrought up his soul to a pitch of con- 
scious and pleasing elevation — and yet this no more 
argues the will of Deity to have a practical authority 
over him, than does that tone of elevation which is 
caught by looking at the sublime of a naked materi- 
alism. The one and the other have their little hour 
of ascendency over him ; and when he turns him to 
the rude and ordinary world, both vanish alike from 
his sensibilities, as does the loveliness of a song. 

To kindle and be elevated by a sense of the 
majesty of God, is one thing. It is totally another 
thing, to feel a movement of obedience to the will of 
God, under the impression of His rightful authority 
over all the creatures whom He has formed. A 
man may have an imagination all alive to the 
former, while the latter never prompts him to one 
act of obedience ; never leads him to compare his 
life with the requirements of the Lawgiver ; never 
carries him from such a scrutiny as this, to the con- 
viction of sin ; never whispers such an accusation to 
the ear of his conscience, as causes him to mourn, 
and to be in heaviness for the guilt *of his hourly 
and habitual rebellion ; never shuts him up to the 
conclusion of the need of a Saviour ; never humbles 
him to acquiescence in the doctrine of that revelation 
which comes to his door with such a host of evidence, 
as even his own philosophy cannot bid away ; never 
extorts a single believing prayer in the name of 
Christ, or points a single look, either of trust or of 
reverence, to His atonement ; never stirs any effec- 
tive movement of conversion ; never sends an aspir- 



IN MATTERS OF RELIGION. 



163 



ing energy into his bosom after the aids of that 
Spirit, who alone can waken him out of his lethar- 
gies, and by the anointing which remaineth, can 
rivet and substantiate in his practice, those goodly 
emotions which have hitherto plied him with the 
deceitfulness of their momentary visits, and then 
capriciously abandoned him. 

The mere majesty of God's power and greatness, 
when offered to your notice, lays hold of one of the 
faculties within you. The holiness of God, with 
His righteous claim of legislation, lays hold of an- 
other of these faculties. The difference between 
them is so great, that the one may be engrossed and 
interested to the full, while the other remains un- 
touched, and in a state of entire dormancy. Now, 
it is no matter what it be that ministers delight to 
the former of these two faculties ; if the latter be 
not arrested and put on its proper exercise, you are 
making no approximation whatever to the right 
habit and character of religion. There are a thou- 
sand ways in which we may contrive to regale your 
taste for that which is beauteous and majestic. It 
may find its gratification in the loveliness of a vale, 
or in the freer and bolder outlines of an upland 
situation, or in the terrors of a storm, or in the 
sublime contemplations of astronomy, or in the 
magnificent idea of a God who sends forth the wake- 
fulness of His omniscient eye, and the vigour of His 
upholding hand, throughout all the realms of nature 
and of providence. The mere taste of the human 
mind may get its ample enjoyment in each and in 
all of these objects, or in a vivid representation of 
them ; nor does it make any material difference. 



164 



SLENDER INFLUENCE OF TASTE 



whether this representation be addressed to you 
from the stanzas of a poem, or from the recitations 
of a theatre, or finally from the discourses and the 
demonstrations of a pulpit. And thus it is, that 
still on the impulse of the one principle only, people 
may come in gathering multitudes to the house of 
God ; and share with eagerness in all the glow and 
bustle of a crowded attendance ; and have their 
every eye directed to the speaker ; and feel a re- 
sponding movement in their bosom to his many 
appeals and his many arguments ; and carry a solemn 
and overpowering impression of all the services away 
with them ; and yet, throughout the whole of this 
seemly exhibition, not one effectual knock may have 
been given at the door of conscience. The other 
principle may be as profoundly asleep, as if hushed 
into the insensibility of death. There is a spirit of 
deep slumber, it would appear, which the music of no 
description, even though attuned to a theme so lofty 
as the greatness and majesty of the Godhead, can 
ever charm away. Oh ! it may have been a piece 
of parading insignificance altogether — the minister 
playing on his favourite instrument, and the people 
dissipating away their time on the charm and idle 
luxury of a theatrical emotion. 

The religion of taste is one thing. The religion 
of conscience is another. We recur to the test : 
What is the plain and practical doing which ought 
to issue from the whole of our argument ? If one 
lesson come more clearly or more authoritatively out 
of it than another, it is the supremacy of the Bible. 
If fitted to impress one movement rather than an- 
other ; it is that movement of docility, in virtue of 



IN MATTERS OF RELIGION. 



1G5 



which, man, with the feeling that he has all to learn, 
places himself in the attitude of a little child, before 
the book of the unsearchable God, who has deigned 
to break His silence, and to transmit even to our age 
of the world, a faithful record of his own communi- 
cation. What progress then are you making in this 
movement ? Are you, or are you not, like new- 
born babes, desiring the sincere milk of the word, 
that you may grow thereby ? How are you coming 
on in the work of casting down your lofty imagina- 
tions ? With the modesty of true science, which is 
here at one with the humblest and most peniten- 
tiary feeling which Christianity can awaken, are you 
bending an eye of earnestness on the Bible, and ap- 
propriating its informations, and moulding your 
every conviction to its doctrines and its testimonies ? 
How long, w r e beseech you, has this been your habi- 
tual exercise ? By this time do you feel the dark- 
ness and the insufficiency of nature ? Have you 
found your way to the need of an atonement ? Have 
you learned the might and the efficacy which are given 
to the principle of faith ? Have you longed with all 
your energies to realize it ? Have you broken loose 
from the obvious misdoings of your former history ? 
Are you convinced of your total deficiency from" the 
spiritual obedience of the affections ? Have you 
read of the Holy Ghost, by whom renewed in the 
whole desire and character of your mind, you are 
led to run with alacrity in the way of the command- 
ments ? Have you turned to its practical use, the 
important truth, that He is given to the believing 
prayers of all, who really want to be relieved from 
the power both of secret and of visible iniquity ? 



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SLENDER INFLUENCE OF TASTE 



We demand something more than the homage you 
have rendered to the pleasantness of the voice that 
has been sounded in your hearing. What we have 
now to urge upon you, is the bidding of the voice, to 
read and to reform, and to pray, and, in a word, to 
make your consistent step from the elevations of 
philosophy, to all those exercises, whether of doing 
or of believing, which mark the conduct of the 
earnest, and the devoted, and the subdued, and the 
aspiring Christian. 

This brings under our view a most deeply in- 
teresting exhibition of human nature, which may 
often be witnessed among the cultivated orders of 
society. When a teacher of Christianity addresses 
himself to that principle of justice within us, in vir- 
tue of which we feel the authority of God to be a pre- 
rogative which righteously belongs to Him, he is then 
speaking the appropriate language of religion, and 
is advancing its naked and appropriate claim over 
the obedience of mankind. He is then urging that 
pertinent and powerful consideration, upon which 
alone he can ever hope to obtain the ascendency of 
a practical influence over the purposes and the con- 
duct of human beings. It is only by insisting on 
the moral claim of God to a right of government 
over his creatures, that he can carry their loyal sub- 
ordination to the will of God. Let him keep by 
this single argument, and urge it upon the con- 
science, and then, without any of the other accom- 
paniments of what is called Christian oratory, he 
may bring convincingly home upon his hearers all 
the varieties of Christian doctrine. He may estab- 
lish within their minds the dominion of all that is 



IN MATTERS OF RELIGION. 167 

/ 

essential in the faitli of the New Testament. He 
may, by carrying out this principle of God's autho- 
rity into all its applications, convince them of sin. 
He may lead them to compare the loftiness and 
spirituality of His law, with the habitual obstinacy 
of their own worldly affections. He may awaken 
them to the need of a Saviour. He may urge them 
to a faithful and submissive perusal of God's own 
communication. He may thence press upon them 
the truth and the immutability of their Sovereign. 
He may work in their hearts an impression of this 
emphatic saying, that God is not to be mocked — 
that His law must be upheld in all the significancy 
of its proclamations — and that either its severities 
must be discharged upon the guilty, or in some 
other way an adequate provision be found for its out- 
raged dignity, and its violated sanctions. Thus may 
he lead them to flee for refuge to the blood of the 
atonement. And he may further urge upon his 
hearers, that such is the enormity of sin, that it is 
not enough to have found an expiation for it ; that 
its power and its existence must be eradicated from 
the hearts of all who are to spend their eternity in 
the mansions of the celestial ; that for this purpose, 
an expedient is made known to us in the New Testa- 
ment ; that a process must be described upon earth, 
to which there is given the appropriate name of 
sanctification ; that, at the very commencement of 
every true course of discipleship, this process is en- 
tered upon with a purpose in the mind of forsaking 
all ; that nothing short of a single devotedness to the 
will of God, will ever carry us forward through the 
successive stages of this holy and elevated career ; 



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SLENDER INFLUENCE OF TASTE 



that to help the infirmities of our nature, the Spirit 
is ever in readiness to be given to those who ask it ; 
and that thus the life of every Christian becomes a 
life of entire dedication to Him who died for us — a 
life of prayer and vigilance, and close dependence 
on the grace of God — and, as the infallible result of 
the plain but powerful and peculiar teaching of the 
Bible, a life of vigorous unwearied activity in the 
doing of all the commandments. 

Now, this we should call the essential business of 
Christianity. This is the truth as it is in Jesus, in 
its naked and unassociated simplicity. In the work 
of urging it, nothing more might have been done than 
to present certain views, which may come with as 
great clearness and freshness, and take as full posses- 
sion of the mind of a peasant, as of the mind of a philo- 
sopher. There is a sense of God, and of the right- 
ful allegiance that is due to Him. There are plain 
and practical appeals to the conscience. There is a 
comparison of the state of the heart, with the require- 
ments of a law which proposes to take the heart 
under its obedience. There is the inward discern- 
ment of its coldness about God ; of its unconcern 
about the matters of duty and of eternity ; of its 
devotion to the forbidden objects of sense ; of its 
constant tendency to nourish within its own recep- 
tacles, the very element and principle of rebellion, 
and in virtue of this, to send forth the stream of an 
hourly and accumulating disobedience over those 
doings of the outer man, which make up his visible 
history in the world. There is such an earnest and 
overpowering impression of all this, as will fix a man 
down to the single object of deliverance ; as will 



IN MATTERS OF RELIGION. 



169 



make him awake only to those realities which have 
a significant and substantial bearing on the case that 
engrosses him ; as will teach him to nauseate all the 
impertinences of tasteful and ambitious description ; 
as will attach him to the truth in its simplicity ; as 
will fasten his every regard upon the Bible, w T here, 
if he persevere in the work of honest inquiry, he will 
soon be made to perceive the accordancy between 
its statements, and all those movements of fear, or 
guilt, or deeply felt necessity, or conscious darkness, 
stupidity, and unconcern about the matters of salva- 
tion, which pass within his own bosom ; in a word, 
as will endear to him that plainness of speech, by 
which his own experience is set evidently before him, 
and that plain phraseology of Scripture, which is 
best fitted to bring home to him the doctrine of re- 
demption, in all the truth and in all the preciousness 
of its applications. 

Now, the whole of this work may be going on, 
and that too in the wisest and most effectual man- 
ner, without so much as one particle of incense 
being offered to any of the subordinate principles of 
the human constitution. There may be no fascina- 
tions of style. There may be no magnificence of 
description. There may be no poignancy of acute 
and irresistible argument. There may be a rivetted 
attention on the part of those whom the Spirit of 
God hath awakened to seriousness about the plain 
and affecting realities of conversion. Their con- 
science may be stricken, and their appetite be ex- 
cited for an actual settlement of mind on those 
points about which they feel restless and uncon- 
firmed. Such as these are vastly too much engrossed 



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with the exigencies of their condition, to be repelled 
by the homeliness of unadorned truth. And thus it 
is, that while the loveliness of the song has done so 
little in helping on the influences of the gospel, our 
men of simplicity and prayer have done so much for it. 
With a deep and earnest impression of the truth 
themselves, they have made manifest that truth to the 
consciences of others. Missionaries have gone forth 
with no other preparation than the simple word 
of the Testimony, — and thousands have owned its 
power, by being both the hearers of the word and 
the doers of it also. They have given us the experi- 
ment in a state of unmingled simplicity ; and we 
learn, from the success of their noble example, that 
without any one human expedient to charm the ear, 
the heart may, by the naked instrumentality of the 
Word of God, urged with plainness on those who 
feel its deceit and its worthlessness, be charmed to 
an entire acquiescence in the revealed way of God, 
and have impressed upon it the genuine stamp and 
character of godliness. 

Could the sense of what is due to God be effec- 
tually stirred up within the human bosom, it would 
lead to a practical carrying of all the lessons of 
Christianity. Now, to awaken this moral sense, 
there are certain simple relations between the crea- 
ture and the Creator, which must be clearly appre- 
hended, and manifested with power unto the con- 
science. We believe, that however much philo- 
sophers may talk about the comparative ease of 
forming those conceptions which are simple, they 
will, if in good earnest after a right footing with God, 
soon discover in their own minds, all that darkness 



IN MATTERS OF RELIGION. 



171 



and incapacity about spiritual things, which are so 
broadly announced to us in the New Testament. 
And oh ! it is a deeply interesting spectacle, to be- 
hold a man, who can take a masterly and command- 
ing survey over the field of some human speculation, 
who can clear his discriminated way through all the 
turns and ingenuities of some human r argument, 
who, by the march of a mighty and resistless de- 
monstration, can scale with assured footstep the 
sublimities of science, and, from his firm stand on 
the eminence he has won, can descry some wondrous 
range of natural or intellectual truth spread out in 
subordination before him : — and yet this very man, 
may, in reference to the moral and authoritative 
claims of the Godhead, be in a state of utter apathy 
and blindness ! All his attempts, either at the 
spiritual discernment, or the practical impression of 
this doctrine, may be arrested and baffled by the 
weight of some great inexplicable impotency. A 
man of homely talents, and still homelier education, 
may see what he cannot see, and feel what he can- 
not feel ; and wise and prudent as he is, there may 
lie the barrier of an obstinate and impenetrable con- 
cealment, between his accomplished mind, and those 
things which are revealed unto babes. 

But while his mind is thus utterly devoid of what 
may be called the main or elemental principle of 
theology, he may have a far quicker apprehension, 
and have his taste and his feelings much more 
powerfully interested, than the simple Christian 
who is beside him, by what may be called the cir- 
cumstantials of theology. He can throw a wider 
and more rapid glance over the magnitudes of 



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creation. He can be more delicately alive to the 
beauties and the sublimities which abound in it. 
He can, when the idea of a presiding God is sug- 
gested to him, have a more kindling sense of His 
natural majesty, and be able, both in imagination 
and in words, to surround the throne of the Divinity 
by the blazonry of more great, and splendid, and 
elevating images. And yet, with all those powers 
of conception which he does possess, he may not 
possess that on which practical Christianity hinges. 
The moral relation between him and God may 
neither be effectively perceived, nor faithfully pro- 
ceeded on. Conscience may be in a state of the 
most entire dormancy, and the man be regaling 
himself with the magnificence of God, while he 
neither loves God, nor believes God, nor obeys God. 

And here I cannot but remark, how much effect 
and simplicity go together in the annals of Moravi- 
anism. The men of this truly interesting denomin- 
ation address themselves exclusively to that principle 
of our nature on which the proper influence of 
Christianity turns. Or, in other words, they take 
up the subject of the gospel message — that message 
devised by Him who knew what was in man, and 
who, therefore, knew how to make the right and the 
suitable application to man. They urge the plain 
Word of the Testimony : and they pray for a bless- 
ing from on high ; and that thick impalpable veil, 
by which the god of this world blinds the hearts of 
them who believe not, lest the light of the glorious 
gospel of Christ should enter in — that veil, which 
no power of philosophy can draw aside, gives way 
to the demonstration of the Spirit ; and thus it is, 



IN MATTERS OF RELIGION. 



173 



that a clear perception of scriptural truth, and all 
the freshness and permanency of its moral influ- 
ences, are to be met with among men who have just 
emerged from the rudest and the grossest barbarity. 
When one looks at the number and the greatness of 
their achievements — when he thinks of the change 
they have made on materials so coarse and so unpro- 
mising — when he eyes the villages they have formed 
— and around the whole of that engaging perspec- 
tive by which they have chequered and relieved the 
grim solitude of the desert, he witnesses the love, 
and listens to the piety of reclaimed savages ; — who 
would not long to be in possession of the charm by 
w T hich they have wrought this wondrous transforma- 
tion — who would not willingly exchange for it all 
the parade of human eloquence, and all the con- 
fidence of human argument — and for the wisdom of 
winning souls, who is there that would not rejoice 
to throw the loveliness of the song, and all the insig- 
nificancy of its passing fascinations away from him ? 

And yet it is right that every cavil against Chris- 
tianity should be met, and every argument for it be 
exhibited, and all the graces and sublimities of its 
doctrine be held out to their merited admiration. 
And if it be true, as it certainly is, that throughout 
the whole of this process a man may be carried re- 
joicingly along from the mere indulgence of his taste, 
and the mere play and exercise of his understand- 
ing ; while conscience is untouched, and the supre- 
macy of moral claims upon the heart and the con- 
duct is practically disowned by him — it is further 
right that this should be adverted to ; and that such 
a melancholy unhingement in the constitution of 



174 



SLENDER INFLUENCE OF TASTE 



man should be fully laid open ; and that he should 
be driven out of the seductive complacency which he 
is so apt to cherish, merely because he delights in the 
loveliness of the song ; and that he should be urged 
with the imperiousness of a demand which still 
remains unsatisfied, to turn him from the corrupt 
indifference of nature, and to become personally a 
religious man ; and that he should be assured how 
all the gratification he felt in listening to the word 
which respected the kingdom of God, will be of no 
avail, unless that kingdom come to himself in power 
— that it will only go to heighten the perversity of 
his character — that it will not extenuate his real and 
practical ungodliness, but will serve most fearfully 
to aggravate its condemnation. 

With a religion so argumentable as ours, it may 
be easy to gather out of it a feast for the human un- 
derstanding. "With a religion so magnificent as ours, 
it may be easy to gather out of it a feast for the 
human imagination. But with a religion so hum- 
bling, and so strict, and so spiritual, it is not easy 
to mortify the pride, or to quell the strong enmity 
of nature ; or to arrest the currency of the affections ; 
or to turn the constitutional habits ; or to pour a 
new complexion over the moral history ; or to stem 
the domineering influence of things seen and things 
sensible ; or to invest faith with a practical supre- 
macy ; or to give its objects such a vivacity of influ- 
ence as shall overpower the near and the hourly im- 
pressions, that are ever emanating upon man from a 
seducing world. It is here that man feels himself 
treading upon the limit of his helplessness. It is 
here that lie sees where the strength of nature ends ; 



IN MATTERS OF RELIGION. 



and the power of grace must either be put forth, or 
leave him to grope his darkling way without one inch 
of progress towards the life and the substance of 
Christianity. It is here that a barrier rises on the 
contemplation of the inquirer— the barrier of sepa- 
ration between the carnal and the spiritual, and on 
which he may idly waste the every energy which 
belongs to him in the enterprise of surmounting it. 
It is here, that after having walked the round of 
nature's acquisitions, and lavished upon the truth 
all his ingenuities, and surveyed it in its every pal- 
pable character of grace and majesty, he will still 
feel himself on a level with the simplest and most 
untutored of the species. He needs the power of a 
living manifestation. He needs the anointing which 
remaineth. He needs that which fixes and perpetu- 
ates a stable revolution upon the character, and in 
virtue of which he may be advanced from the state 
of one who hears and is delighted, to the state of 
one who hears and is a doer. How strikingly is the 
experience even of vigorous and accomplished nature 
at one on this point with the announcements of re- 
velation, that to work this change, there must be 
the putting forth of a peculiar agency ; and that it 
is an agency, which, withheld from the exercise of 
loftiest talent, is often brought down on an impressed 
audience, through the humblest of all instrumentality, 
with the demonstration of the Spirit and with power. 

Think it not enough, that you carry in your bosom 
an expanding sense of the magnificence of creation. 
But pray for a subduing sense of the authority of 
the Creator. Think it not enough, that with the 
justness of a philosophical discernment, you have 



176 



SLENDER INFLUENCE OF TASTE 



traced that boundary which hems in all the possi- 
bilities of human attainment, and have found that 
all beyond it is a dark and fathomless unknown. 
But let this modesty of science be carried, as in con- 
sistency it ought, to the question of revelation, and 
let all the antipathies of nature be schooled to acqui- 
escence in the authentic testimonies of the Bible. 
Think it not enough, that you have looked with 
sensibility and wonder at the representation of God 
throned in immensity, yet combining, with the vast- 
ness of his entire superintendence, a most thorough 
inspection into all the minute and countless diver- 
sities of existence. Think of your own heart as one 
of these diversities ; and that he ponders all its ten- 
dencies ; and has an eye upon all its movements ; 
and marks all its waywardness ; and, God of judg- 
ment as he is, records its every secret, and its every 
sin, in the book of his remembrance. Think it not 
enough, that you have been led to associate a gran- 
deur with the salvation of the New Testament, when 
made to understand that it draws upon it the regards 
of an arrested universe. How is it arresting your 
own mind ? What has been the earnestness of your 
personal regards towards it ? And tell us, if all its 
faith, and all its repentance, and all its holiness, are 
not disowned by you ? Think it not enough, that you 
have felt a sentimental charm when angels were pic- 
tured to your fancy as beckoning you to their man- 
sions, and anxiously looking to the every symptom 
of your grace and reformation. Oh be constrained by 
the power of all this tenderness, and yield yourselves 
up in a practical obedience to the call of the Lord 
God, merciful and gracious. Think it not enough, 



IN MATTERS OF RELIGION. 



177 



that you have shared for a moment in the deep and 
busy interest of that arduous conflict which is now- 
going on for a moral ascendency over the species. 
Remember that the conflict is for each of you indi- 
vidually ; and let this alarm you into a watchfulness 
against the power of every temptation, and a cleav- 
ing dependence upon Him through whom alone you 
will be more than conquerors. Above all, forget not, 
that while you only hear and are delighted, you are 
still under nature's powerlessness and nature's con- 
demnation — and that the foundation is not laid, the 
mighty and essential change is not accomplished, 
the transition from death unto life is not undergone, 
the saving faith is not formed, nor the passage taken 
from darkness to the marvellous light of the gospel, 
till you are both hearers of the word and doers also. 
" For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, 
he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in 
a glass : for he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, 
and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he 



M 



APPENDIX. 



179 



APPENDIX. 



The writer of these Discourses has drawn up the following 
compilation of passages from Scripture, as serving to illustrate or 
to confirm the leading arguments which have been employed in 
each separate division of his subject. 



DISCOURSE I. 

In the beginning God created the heaven and the 
earth. — Gen. i. }. 

Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and 
all the host of them. — Gen. ii. 1. 

Behold, the heaven, and the heaven of heavens, is 
the Lord's thy God, the earth also, with all that 
therein is. — Deut. x. 14. 

There is none like unto the God of Jeshurun, who 
rideth upon the heaven in thy help, and in his ex- 
cellency on the sky. — Deut. xxxiii. 26. 

And Hezekiah prayed before the Lord, and said, 
Lord God of Israel, which dwellest between the 
cherubims, thou art the God, even thou alone, of all 
the kingdoms of the earth ; thou hast made heaven 
and earth. — 2 Kings xix. 15. 

For all the gods of the people are idols: but the 
Lord made the heavens. — 1 Chron. xvi. 26. 

Thou, even thou, art Lord alone : thou hast made 
heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, 



180 



APPENDIX. 



the earth, and all things that are therein, the seas, 
and all that is therein ; and thou preservest them all ; 
and the host of heaven worshipped thee. — Nehemiah 
ix. 6. 

Which alone spreadeth out the heavens, and tread- 
eth upon the waves of the sea ; which maketh Arc- 
turus, Orion, and Pleiades, and the chambers of the 
south. — Job ix. 8, 9. 

He stretcheth out the north over the empty place, 
and hangeth the earth upon nothing. — Job xxvi. 7. 

By his Spirit he hath garnished the heavens. — 
Job xxvi. 13. 

The heavens declare the glory of God ; and the 
firmament showeth his handy-work. — Psalm xix. 1. 

By the word of the Lord were the heavens made ; 
and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth. 
— Psalm xxxiii. 6. 

Of old hast thou laid the foundation of the earth ; 
and the heavens are the work of thy hands. — Psalm 
cii. 25. 

Who coverest thyself with light as with a gar- 
ment ; who stretchiest out the heavens like a curtain. 
— Psalm civ. 2. 

He appointed the moon for seasons ; the sun 
knoweth his going down. — Psalm civ. 1 9. 

Ye are blessed of the Lord, which made heaven 
and earth. The heaven, even the heavens, are the 
Lord's : but the earth hath he given to the children 
of men. — Psalm cxv. 15, 16. 

My help cometh from the Lord, which made 
heaven and earth. — Psalm exxi. 2. 

Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made 
heaven and earth. — Psalm exxiv. 8. 



APPENDIX. 



181 



The Lord, that made heaven and earth, bless thee 
out of Zion. — Psalm cxxxiv. 3. 

Which made heaven, and earth, the sea, and all 
that therein is. — Psalm cxlvi. 6. 

The Lord by wisdom hath founded the earth ; by 
understanding hath he established the heavens. — 
Prov. iii. 19. 

Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of 
his hand, and meted out heaven with the span, and 
comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure, 
and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills 
in a balance? — Isa. xl. 12. 

It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, 
and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers ; 
that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and 
spreadcth them out as a tent to dwell in. — Isa. xl. 22. 

Thus saith God the Lord, he that created the 
heavens, and stretched them out ; he that spread 
forth the earth, and that which cometh out of it ; 
he that giveth breath unto the people upon it, and 
spirit to them that walk therein. — Isa. xlii. 5. 

Thus saith the Lord, thy Redeemer, and he that 
formed thee from the womb, I am the Lord that 
maketh all things ; that stretcheth forth the heavens 
alone ; that spreadeth abroad the earth by myself. 
— Isa. xliv. 24. 

I have made the earth, and created man upon it : 
I, even my hands, have stretched out the heavens, 
and all their host have I commanded. — Isa. xlv. 12. 

For thus saith the Lord that created the heavens, 
God himself that formed the earth, and made it ; 
he hath established it, he created it not in vain, he 
formed it to be inhabited. — Isa. xlv. 18. 



182 



APPENDIX. 



Mine hand also hath laid the foundation of the 
earth, and my right hand hath spanned the heavens : 
when I call unto them, they stand up together.- — 
Isa. xlviii. 13. 

He hath made the earth, by his power, he hath es- 
tablished the world by his wisdom, and hath stretch- 
ed out the heavens by his discretion. — Jer. x. 12. 

Ah Lord God ! behold, thou hast made the hea- 
ven and the earth by thy great power and stretched- 
out arm, and there is nothing too hard for thee. — 
Jer. xxxii. 17. 

He hath made the earth by his power, he hath 
established the world by his wisdom, and hath 
stretched out the heaven by his understanding. — 
Jer. li. 1 5. 

It is he that buildeth his stories in the heaven, 
and hath founded his troop in the earth ; he that 
calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them 
out upon the face of the earth: The Lord is his 
name. — Amos ix. 6. 

We also are men of like passions with you, and 
preach unto you, that ye should turn from these 
vanities unto the living God, which made heaven, 
and earth, and the sea, and all things that are there- 
in. — Acts xiv. 15. 

Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, 
whom lie hath appointed heir of all things, by whom 
also he made the worlds. — Heb. i. 2. 

Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the founda- 
tion of the earth ; and the heavens are the works of 
thine hands. — Heb. i. 10. 

Through faith we understand that the worlds were 
framed by the word of God. — Heb. xi. 3. 



APPENDIX. 



183 



DISCOURSE II. 

The secret things belong unto the Lord our God ; 
but those things which are revealed belong unto us 
and to our children for ever, that we may do all the 
words of this law. — Deut. xxix. 29. 

I would seek unto God, and unto God would I 
commit my cause ; which doeth great things and 
unsearchable ; marvellous things without number. — 
Job v. 8, 9. 

Which doeth great things past finding out ; yea, 
and wonders without number. — Job ix. 10. 

Canst thou by searching find out God? canst 
thou find out the Almightv unto perfection ? — Job 
xi. 7. 

Hast thou heard the secret of God ? and dost thou 
restrain wisdom to thyself? — Job xv. 8. 

Lo, these are parts of his ways ; but how little a 
portion is heard of him ? but the thunder of his 
power who can understand ? — Job xxvi. 14. 

Behold, God is great, and we know him not, 
neither can the number of his years be searched out. 
— Job xxxvi. 26. 

God thundereth marvellously with his voice : 
great things doeth he, which we cannot comprehend. 
— Job xxxvii. 5. 

Touching the Almighty, we cannot find him out : 
he is excellent in power, and in judgment, and in 
plenty of justice. — Job xxxvii. 23. 

Thy way is in the sea, and thy path in the great 
waters, and thy footsteps are not known. — Psalm 
Jxxvii. 19. 



184 



APPENDIX. 



Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised ; and 
his greatness is unsearchable. — Psalm cxlv. 3. 

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither 
are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the 
heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways 
higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your 
thoughts. — Isa. lv. 8, 9. 

Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, 
and become as little children, ye shall not enter into 
the kingdom of heaven. — Matt, xviii. 3. 

Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive 
the kingdom of God as a little child, shall in nowise 
enter therein. — Luke xviii. 1 7. 

the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and 
knowledge of God ! how unsearchable are his judg- 
ments, and his ways past finding out ! For who hath 
known the mind of the Lord ? or who hath been his 
counsellor? — Rom. xi. 33, 34. 

Let no man deceive himself. If any man among 
you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become 
a fool, that he may be wise. — 1 Cor. iii. 1 8. 

For if a man think himself to be something, when 
he is nothing, he deceiveth himself. — Gal. vi. 3. 

Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy 
and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after 
the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. — 
Col. ii. 8. 

Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy 
trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and op- 
positions of science falsely so called. — 1 Tim. vi. 20. 



APPENDIX. 



185 



DISCOURSE III 

But will God indeed dwell on the earth ? Behold, 
the heaven, and heaven of heavens, cannot contain 
thee ; how much less this house that I havebuilded ! 
Yet have thou respect unto the prayer of thy servant, 
and to his supplication, Lord my God, to hearken 
unto the cry and to the prayer which thy servant 
prayeth before thee to-day : that thine eyes may be 
open toward this house night and day, even toward 
the place of w 7 hich thou hast said, My name shall be 
there ; that thou mayest hearken unto the prayer 
which thy servant shall make toward this place. — 
1 Kings viii. 27, 28, 29. 

For he looketh to the ends of the earth, and seeth 
under the whole heaven. — Job xxviii. 24. 

For his eyes are upon the ways of man, and he 
seeth all his goings. — Job xxxiv. 21. 

Though the Lord be high, yet hath he respect 
unto the lowly. — Psalm cxxxviii. 6. 

Lord, thou hast searched me, and known me. 
Thou knowest my down-sitting and mine up-rising ; 
thou understandest my thought afar off. Thou com- 
passest my path, and my lying down, and art ac- 
quainted with all my ways. For there is not a word 
in my tongue, but, lo, Lord, thou knowest it al- 
together. Thou hast beset me behind and before, 
and laid thine hand upon me. Such knowledge is 
too wonderful for me ; it is high, I cannot attain unto 
it. Whither shall I go from thy Spirit ? or whither 
shall I flee from thy presence ? — Psalm cxxxix. 1-7. 

How precious also are thy thoughts unto me, 



186 



APPENDIX. 



God ! how great is the sum of them ! If I should 
count them, they are more in number than the 
sand : when I awake, I am still with thee. — Psalm 
exxxix. 17, 18. 

The eyes of the Lord are in every place, behold- 
ing the evil and the good. — Prov. xv. 3. 

Can any hide himself in secret places that I shall 
not see him ? saith the Lord : do not I fill heaven 
and earth ? saith the Lord. — Jer. xxiii. 24. 

Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, 
neither do they reap, nor gather into barns ; yet your 
heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much 
better than they ? And why take ye thought for 
raiment ? Consider the lilies of the field, how they 
grow ; they toil not, neither do they spin : and yet 
I say unto you, That even Solomon, in all his glory, 
was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if 
God so clothe the grass of the field, which to-day is, 
and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not 
much more clothe you, ye of little faith ? — Matt, 
vi. 26, 28, 29, 30. 

But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. 
—Matt. x. 30. 

Neither is there any creature that is not manifest 
in his sight : but all things are naked and opened 
unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do. — 
Heb. iv. 13. 



APPENDIX. 



137 



DISCOURSE IV. 

And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on 
the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven; and 
behold the angels of God ascending and descending 
on it. — Gen. xxviii. 12. 

For a thousand years in thy sight are but as 
yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the 
night. — Psalm xc. 4. 

Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look upon 
the earth beneath ; for the heavens shall vanish away 
like smoke, and the earth shall wax old like a gar- 
ment, and they that dwell therein shall die in like 
manner : but my salvation shall be for ever, and my 
righteousness shall not be abolished. — Isa. li. 6. 

For the Son of man shall come in the glory of his 
Father, with his angels ; and then he shall reward 
every man according to his works. — Matt. xvi. 27. 

When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and 
all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon 
the throne of his glory. — Matt. xxv. 31. 

Also I say unto you, Whosoever shall confess me 
before men, him shall the Son of man also confess 
before the angels of God : but he that denieth me 
before men, shall be denied before the angels of 
God.— Luke xii. 8, 9. 

And he saith unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto 
you, Hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the 
angels of God ascending and descending upon the 
Son of man. — John i. 51, 

We are made a spectacle unto the world, and to 
angels and to men. — 1 Cor. iv. 9. 



188 



APPENDIX. 



Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and 
given him a name which is above every name ; that 
at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of 
things in heaven, and things in earth, and things 
under the earth ; and that every tongue should con- 
fess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God 
the Father.— Phil. ii. 9, 10, 11. 

When the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from 
heaven with his mighty angels. — 2 Thess. i. 7. 

And, without controversy, great is the mystery of 
godliness : God was manifest in the flesh, justified 
in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the 
Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into 
glory. — 1 Tim. iii. 16. 

I charge thee before God, and the Lord Jesus 
Christ, and the elect angels, that thou observe these 
things.— 1 Tim. v. 21. 

And a^ain, when he bringeth in the first-begotten 
into the world, he saith, And let all the angels of 
God worship him. — Heb. i. 6. 

But ye are come unto Mount Zion, and unto the 
city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and 
to an innumerable company of angels, to the general 
assembly and church of the first-born, which are 
written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and 
to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus 
the mediator of the new covenant. — Heb. xii. 22, 
23, 24. 

But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, 
that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, 
and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not 
slack concerning his promise, as some men count 
slackness ; but is long-suffering to us-ward, not will- 



APPENDIX. 



189 



ing that any should perish, but that all should 
come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will 
come as a thief in the night ; in the which the 
heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the 
elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also, 
and the works that are therein, shall be burnt up. — 
2 Peter iii. 8, 9, 10. 

And the angel which I saw stand upon the sea 
and upon the earth lifted up his hand to heaven, 
and sware by him that liveth for evey and ever, who 
created heaven, and the things that therein are, and 
the earth, and the things that therein are, and the 
sea, and the things which are therein, that there 
should be time no longer. — Rev. x. 5, 6. 

And the third angel followed them, saying with 
a loud voice, If any man worship the beast and his 
image, and receive his mark in his forehead, or in 
his hand, the same shall drink of the wine of the 
wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture, 
into the cup of his indignation ; and he shall be tor- 
mented with fire and brimstone in the presence of 
the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb. — 
Rev. xiv. 9, 10. 

And I saw a great white throne, and him that 
sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven 
fled away ; and there was found no place for them. 
— Rev. xx. 11. 



DISCOURSE V. 

And Nathan departed unto his house : and the 
Lord struck the child that Uriah's wife bare unto 



190 



APPENDIX. 



David, and it was very sick. David therefore be- 
sought God for the child ; and David fasted, and 
went in, and lay all night upon the earth. And the 
elders of his house arose, and went to him, to raise 
him up from the earth : but he would not, neither 
did he eat bread with them. And it came to pass 
on the seventh day, that the child died. And the 
servants of David feared to tell him that the child 
was dead ; for they said, Behold, while the child was 
yet alive, we. spake unto him, and he would not 
hearken unto our voice : how will he then vex him- 
self, if we tell him that the child is dead ? But 
when David saw that his servants whispered, David 
perceived that the child was dead : therefore David 
said unto his servants, Is the child dead ? And 
they said, He is dead. Then David arose from 
the earth, and washed, and anointed himself, and 
changed his apparel, and came into the house of the 
Lord, and worshipped : then he came to his own 
house ; and when he required, they set bread before 
him, and he did eat. Then said his servants unto 
him, Wha t thing is this that thou hast done ? Thou 
didst fast and weep for the child while it was alive; 
but when the child was dead, thou didst rise and eat 
bread. And he said, While the child was yet alive, 
I fasted and wept : for I said, Who can tell whether 
God will be gracious to me, that the child may live ? 
But now he is dead, wherefore should I fast ? can I 
bring him back again ? I shall go to him, but he 
shall not return to me. — 2 Sam. xii. 15-23. 

The angel of the Lord encampeth round about 
them that fear him, and delivereth them. — Psalm 
xxx i v. 7. 



APPENDIX. 



191 



For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to 
keep thee in all thy ways. — Psalm xei. 11. 

And he shall send his angels with a great sound 
of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect 
from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the 
other. — Matt. xxiv. 31. 

Likewise, I say unto you, There is joy in the 
presence of the angels of God over one sinner that 
repenteth. — Luke xv. 10. 

Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to 
minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation ? — 
Heb. i. 14. 



DISCOURSE VI. 

Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the 
wilderness, to be tempted of the devil. — Matt. iv. 1. 

The enemy that sowed them is the devil ; the 
harvest is the end' of the world ; and the reapers are 
the angels. The Son of man shall send forth his 
angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all 
things that offend, and them which do iniquity. — 
Matt. xiii. 39, 41. 

Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, 
Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, pre- 
pared for the devil and his angels. — Matt. xxv. 41. 

And in the synagogue there was a man which had 
a spirit of an unclean devil, and cried out with a 
loud voice, saying, Let us alone ; what have we to 
do with thee, thou Jesus of Nazareth ? art thou come 



192 



APPENDIX. 



to destroy us ? I know thee who thou art : the Holy 
One of God. — Luke iv. 33, 34. 

Those by the way-side are they that hear ; then 
cometh the devil, and taketh away the word out of 
their hearts, lest they should believe and be saved. 
— Luke viii. 12. 

But he, knowing their thoughts, said unto them, 
Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to 
desolation ; and a house divided against a house 
falleth. If Satan also be divided against himself, 
how shall his kingdom stand ? because ye say that 
I cast out devils through Beelzebub. — Luke xi. 17, 
18. 

Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of 
your father ye will do : he was a murderer from the 
beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there 
is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he 
speaketh of his own : for he is a liar and the father 
of it. — John viii. 44. 

And supper being ended, (the devil having now 
put into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, 
to betray him.) — John xiii. 2. 

But Peter said, Ananias, why hath Satan filled 
thine heart to lie to the Holy Ghost, and to keep 
back part of the price of the land ? — Acts v. 3. 

To open their eyes, and to turn them from dark- 
ness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, 
that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and in- 
heritance among them which are sanctified by faith 
that is in me. — Acts xxvi. 18. 

And the God of peace shall bruise Satan under 
your feet shortly. The grace of our Lord Jesus 
Christ be with you. Amen. — Rom. xvi. 20. 



APPENDIX. 



193 



Lest Satan should get an advantage of us : for we 
are not ignorant of his devices. — 2 Cor. ii. 11. 

In whom the god of this world hath blinded the 
minds of them w T hich believe not, lest the light of 
the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of 
God, should shine unto them. — 2 Cor. iv. 4. 

Wherein in time past ye walked according to the 
course of this world, according to the prince of the 
power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the 
children of disobedience. — Eph. ii. 2. 

Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be 
able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we 
wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against prin- 
cipalities, against powers, against the rulers of the 
darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness 
in high places. — Eph. vi. 11, 12. 

For some are already turned aside after Satan. — 
1 Tim. v. 15. 

Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of 
flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of 
the same ; that through death he might destroy him 
that had the power of death, that is, the devil. — 
Heb. ii. 14. 

Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the 
devil, and he will flee from you. — James iv. 7. 

Be sober, be vigilant ; because your adversary the 
devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom 
he may devour ; whom resist steadfast in the faith, 
knowing that the same afflictions are accomplished 
in your brethren that are in the world. — 1 Pet. v. 
8, 9. 

He that committeth sin is of the devil ; for the 
devil sinneth from the beginning. For this purpose 

7 N 



194 



APPENDIX. 



the Son of God was manifested, that lie might de- 
stroy the works of the devil. — In this the children 
of God are manifest, and the children of the devil : 
whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God, 
neither he that lovetli not his brother. — 1 John iii. 
8, 10. 

Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome 
them ; because greater is lie that is in you, than he 
that is in the world. — 1 John iv. 4. 

And the angels which kept not their first estate, 
but left their own habitation, lie hath reserved in 
everlasting chains, under darkness, unto the judg- 
ment of the great day. — Jude 6. 

He that overcometh, the same shall be clothed in 
white raiment ; and I will not blot out his name out 
of the book of life, but I will confess his name be- 
fore my Father, and before his angels. — Rev. iii. 5. 

And there was war in heaven : Michael and his 
angels fought against the dragon ; and the dragon 
fought and his angels ; and prevailed not ; neither 
was their place found any more in heaven. And 
the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, 
called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the 
whole world ; he was cast out into the earth, and his 
angels were cast out with him. Therefore rejoice, 
ye heavens, and ye that dwell in them. Woe to the 
inhabiters of the earth and of the sea ! for the devil 
is come down unto you, having great wrath, because 
he knoweth that he hath but a short time. — Rev. 
xii. 7, 8, 9, 12. 

And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent 
which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a 
thousand years. And when the thousand years are 



APPENDIX. 



195 



expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison. 
And the devil that deceived them was cast into the 
lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the 
false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and 
night for ever and ever. — Rev. xx. 2, 7, 10. 



DISCOURSE VII. 

Therefore, whosoever heareth these sayings of 
mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise 
man, which built his house upon a rock ; and the 
rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds 
blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not : for 
it was founded upon a rock. And every one that 
heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, 
shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built 
his house upon the sand ; and the rain descended, 
and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat 
upon that house ; and it fell : and great was the fall 
of it.— Matt. vii. 24-27. 

At that time Jesus answered and said, I thank 
thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because 
thou hast hid these things from the wise and pru- 
dent, and hast revealed them unto babes. — Matt. xi. 
25. 

Then shall ye begin to say, We have eaten and 
drunk in thy presence, and thou hast taught in our 
streets. But he shall say, I tell you, I know you 
not whence ye are : depart from me, all ye workers 
of iniquity. — Luke xiii. 26, 27. 

For not the hearers of the law are just before God, 



IDG 



APPENDIX. 



but the doers of the law shall be justified. — Rom. 
ii. 13. 

And I, brethren, when I came to you, came not 
with excellency of speech, or of wisdom, declaring 
unto you the testimony of God : for I determined 
not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, 
and him crucified. And my speech and my preach- 
ing was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, 
but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power ; 
that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of 
men, but in the power of God. Now we have re- 
ceived not the spirit of the world, but the spirit 
which is of God ; that we might know the things 
that are freely given to us of God. Which things 
also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom 
teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth ; com- 
paring spiritual things with spiritual. But the na- 
tural man receiveth not the things of the spirit of 
God ; for they are foolishness unto him : neither can 
he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. 
— 1 Cor. ii. 1, 2, 4, 5, 12, 13, J 4. 

For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with 
God.— 1 Cor. iii. 19. 

For the kingdom of God is not in word, but in 
power. — 1 Cor. iv. 20. 

Forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be 
the epistle of Christ, ministered by us, written not 
with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God ; not 
in tables of stone, but in fleshly tables of the heart. 
Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think any 
thing as of ourselves ; but our sufficiency is of God ; 
who also hath made us able ministers of the New 
Testament ; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for 



APPENDIX. 



197 



the letter killeth, but the spirit givetli life. — 2 Cor. 
iii. 3, 5, 6. 

That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father 
of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and 
revelation in the knowledge of him : the eyes of your 
understanding being enlightened ; that ye may know 
what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches 
of the glory. of his inheritance in the saints, and 
what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us- 
w r ard who believe, according to the working of his 
mighty power. — Eph. i. 17, 18, 19. 

And you hath he quickened, who were dead in 
trespasses and sins. For we are his workmanship, 
created in Christ Jesus unto good works. — Eph. ii. 
1, 10. 

For our gospel came not unto you in word only, 
but also in power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in 
much assurance. — 1 Thess. i. 5. 

Of his own will begat he us with the word of 
truth, that we should be a kind of first-fruits of his 
creatures. But be ye doers of the word, and not 
hearers only, deceiving your ownselves. For if any 
be a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like 
untc a man beholding his natural face in a glass : 
for he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and 
straightway forget teth what manner of man he was. 
But whoso looketh into the perfect law /of liberty, 
and continueth therein, he beinir not a forgetful 
hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be 
blessed in his deed.— James i. 18, 22, 23, 24, 25. 

But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priest- 
hood, an holy nation, a peculiar people ; that ye 
should show forth the praises of him who hath 



198 



APPENDIX. 



called you out of darkness into his marvellous light. 
— 1 Peter ii. 9. 

But ye have an unction from the Holy One, and 
ye know all things. But the anointing which ye 
have received of him abideth in you ; and ye need 
not that any man teach you : but as the same 
anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, 
and is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye 
shall abide in him. — 1 John ii. 20, 27. 



DISCOURSES 

OF A 

KINDRED CHARACTER WITH THE PRECEDING. 



DISCOURSE I. 



THE CONSTANCY OF GOD IN HIS WORKS AN ARGUMENT 
FOR THE FAITHFULNESS OF GOD IN HIS WORD. 



" For ever, Lord, thy word is settled in heaven. Thy faithful- 
ness is unto all generations : thou hast established the earth, and it 
abideth. They continue this day according to thine ordinances ; for 
all are thy servants." — Psalm cxix. 89, 90, 91. 

In these verses there is affirmed to be an analogy 
between the word of God and the works of God. It 
is said of His word, that it is settled in heaven, and 
that it sustains its faithfulness from one generation 
to another. It is said of His works, and more espe- 
cially of those that are immediately around us, even 
of the earth which we inhabit, that as it was estab- 
lished at the first so it abideth afterwards. And 
then, as if to perfect the assimilation between them, 
it is said of both in the 91st verse, "They continue 
this day according to thine ordinances, for all are thy 
servants thereby identifying the sureness of that 
word which proceeded from His lips, with the unfail- 
ing constancy of that Nature which was formed and 
is upholden by His hands. 

The constancy of Nature is taught by universal 
experience, and even strikes the popular eye as the 
most characteristic of those features which have been 
impressed upon her. It may need the aid of philo- 



202 



THE CONSTANCY OF NATURE 



sophy to learn how unvarying Nature is in all her 
processes — how even her seeming anomalies can be 
traced to a law that is inflexible — how what might 
appear at first to be the caprices of her waywardness, 
are, in fact, the evolutions of a mechanism that 
never changes — and that the more thoroughly she is 
sifted and put to the test by the interrogations of 
the curious, the more certainly will they find that 
she walks by a rule which knows no abatement, and 
perseveres with obedient footstep in that even course, 
from which the eye of strictest scrutiny has never 
yet detected one hair-breadth of deviation. It is no 
longer doubted by men of science, that every remain- 
ing semblance of irregularity in the universe is due, 
not to the fickleness of Nature, but to the ignorance 
of man — that her most hidden movements are con- 
ducted with a uniformity as rigorous as Fate — that 
even the fitful agitations of the weather have their 
law and their principle — that the intensity of every 
breeze, and the number of drops in every shower, and 
the formation of every cloud, and all the occurring 
alternations of storm and sunshine, and the endless 
shiftings of temperature, and those tremulous varie- 
ties of the air which our instruments have enabled 
us to discover but have not enabled us to explain — 
that still, they follow each other by a method of suc- 
cession, which, though greatly more intricate, is yet 
as absolute in itself as the order of the seasons, or 
the mathematical courses of astronomy. This is the 
impression of every philosophical mind with regard 
to Nature, and it is strengthened by each new acces- 
sion that is made to science. The more we are ac- 
quainted with her, the more are we led to recognise 



AND FAITHFULNESS OF GOD. 



203 



her constancy ; and to view her as a mighty though 
complicated machine, all whose results are sure, and 
all whose workings are invariable. 

But there is enough of patent and palpable regu- 
larity in Nature, to give also to the popular mind the 
same impression of her constancy. There is a gross 
and general experience that teaches the same lesson, 
and that has lodged in every bosom a hind of secure 
and steadfast confidence in the uniformity of her pro- 
cesses. The very child knows and proceeds upon it. 
He is aware of an abiding character and property in 
the elements around him — and has already learned 
as much of the fire, and the water, and the food that 
he eats, and the firm ground that he treads upon, 
and even of the gravitation by which he must regu- 
late his postures and his movements, as to prove, 
that, infant though he be, he is fully initiated in the 
doctrine, that Nature has her laws and her ordinances, 
and that she continueth therein. And the proofs of 
this are ever multiplying along the journey of human 
observation : insomuch, that when we come to man- 
hood, we read of Nature's constancy throughout 
every department of the visible world. It meets us 
wherever we turn our eyes. Both the day and the 
night bear witness to it. The silent revolutions of 
the firmament give it their pure testimony. Even 
those appearances in the heavens, at which super- 
stition stood aghast, and imagined that Nature was 
on the eve of giving way, are the proudest trophies 
of that stability which reigns throughout her pro- 
cesses — of that unswerving consistency wherewith she 
prosecutes all her movements. And the lesson that 
is thus held forth to us from the heavens above, is 



204 



THE CONSTANCY OF NATURE 



responded to by the earth below ; just as the tides 
of ocean wait the footsteps of the moon, and, by an 
attendance kept up without change or intermission 
for thousands of years, would seem to connect the 
regularity of earth with the regularity of heaven. 
But, apart from these greater and simpler energies, 
we see a course and a uniformity everywhere. We 
recognise it in the mysteries of vegetation. We 
follow it through the successive stages of growth, 
and maturity, and decay, both in plants and animals. 
We discern it still more palpably in that beautiful 
circulation of the element of water, as it rolls its way 
by many thousand channels to the ocean — and, from 
the surface of this expanded reservoir, is again up- 
lifted to the higher regions of the atmosphere — and 
is there dispersed in light and fleecy magazines over 
the four quarters of the globe — and at length accom- 
plishes its orbit, by falling in showers on a world that 
waits to be refreshed by it. And all goes to impress 
us with the regularity of Nature, which, in fact, teems 
throughout all its varieties, with power, and principle, 
and uniform laws of operation — and is viewed by us 
as avast laboratory, all the progressions of which have 
a rigid and unfailing necessity stamped upon them. 

Now, this contemplation has at times served to 
foster the atheism of philosophers. It has led them 
to deify Nature, and to make her immutability stand 
in the place of God. They seem imprest with the 
imagination, that had the Supreme Cause been a 
Being who thinks, and wills, and acts as man does, 
on the impulse of a felt and a present motive, there 
would be more the appearance of spontaneous ac- 
tivity, and less of mute and unconscious mechanism 



AND FAITHFULNESS OF GOD. 



205 



in the administrations of the universe. It is the 
very unchangeableness of nature, and the steadfast- 
ness of those great and mighty processes wherewith 
no living power that is superior to Nature, and is 
able to shift or to control her, is seen to interfere — 
it is this which seems to have imprest the notion of 
some blind and eternal fatality on certain men of 
loftiest but deluded genius. And, accordingly, in 
France, where the physical sciences have, of late, 
been the most cultivated, have there also been the 
most daring avowals of atheism. The universe has 
been affirmed to be an everlasting and indestructible 
effect ; and from the abiding constancy that is seen 
in Nature, through all her departments, have they 
inferred, that thus it has always been, and that thus 
it will ever be. 

But this atheistical impression that is derived 
from the constancy of Nature is not peculiar to the 
disciples of philosophy. It is the familiar and the 
practical impression of every-day life. The world 
is apprehended to move on steady and unvarying 
principles of its own ; and these secondary causes 
have usurped, in man's estimation, the throne of the 
Divinity. Nature, in fact, is personified into God : 
and as we look to the performance of a machine 
without thinking of its maker, — so the very exact- 
ness and certainty, wherewith the machinery of 
creation performs its evolutions, has thrown a dis- 
guise over the agency of the Creator. Should God 
interpose by miracle, or interfere by some striking 
and special manifestation of providence, then man 
is awakened to the recognition of Him. But he loses 
sight of the Being who sits behind these visible 



206 



THE CONSTANCY OF NATURE 



elements, while he regards those attributes of con- 
stancy and power w T hich appear in the elements 
themselves. They see no demonstration of a God, 
and they feel no need of Him, while such unchang- 
ing and such unfailing energy continues to operate 
in the visible world around them ; and we need not 
go to the schools of ratiocination in quest of this 
infidelity, but may detect it in the bosoms of simple 
and unlettered men, who, unknown to themselves, 
make a God of Nature, and just because of Nature's 
constancy ; having no faith in the unseen Spirit who 
originated all and upholds all, and that because all 
things continue as they were from the beginning of 
the Creation. 

Such has been the perverse effect of Nature's con- 
stancy on the alienated mind of man : but let us now 
attend to the true interpretation of it. God has, in 
the first instance, put into our minds a disposition 
to count on the uniformity of nature, insomuch that 
we universally look for a recurrence of the same 
event in the same circumstances. This is not merely 
the belief of experience, but the belief of instinct. 
It is antecedent to all the findings of observation, 
and may be exemplified in the earliest stages of 
childhood. The infant who makes a noise on the 
table with his hand for the first time, anticipates a re- 
petition of the noise from a repetition of the stroke, 
with as much confidence as lie who has witnessed, 
for years together, the unvariablcncss wherewith 
these two terms of the succession have followed each 
other. Or, in other words, God, by putting this faith 
into every human creature, and making it a ne- 
cessary part of his mental constitution, has taught 



AND FAITHFULNESS OF GOD. 



207 



him at all times to expect the like result in the 
like circumstances. He has thus virtually told him 
what is to happen, and what he has to look for in 
every given condition — and by its so happening 
accordingly, He just makes good the veracity of His 
own declaration. The man who leads me to ex- 
pect that which he fails to accomplish, I would hold 
to be a deceiver. God has so framed the machinery 
of my perceptions, as that I am led irresistibly to ex- 
pect, that everywhere events will follow each other 
in the very train in which I have ever been accus- 
tomed to observe them — and when God so sustains 
the uniformity of nature, that in every instance it 
is rigidly so, He is just manifesting the faithfulness 
of His character. Were it otherwise he would be 
practising a mockery on the expectation which He 
himself had inspired. God may be said to have 
promised to every human being, that Nature will be 
constant — if not by the whisper of an inward voice 
to every heart, at least by the force of an uncontrol- 
lable bias which he has impressed on every constitu- 
tion. So that when we behold Nature keeping by 
its constancy, we behold the God of Nature keeping 
by His faithfulness — and the system of visible things, 
with its general laws, and its successions which are 
invariable, instead of an opaque materialism to in- 
tercept from the view of mortals the face of the Di- 
vinity, becomes the mirror which reflects upon them 
the truth that is unchangeable, the ordination that 
never fails. 

Conceive that it had been otherwise — first, that 
man had no faith in the constancy of Nature — then 
how could all his experience have profited him? How 



208 



THE CONSTANCY OF NATURE 



could he have applied the recollections of his past, 
to the guidance of his future history ? And what 
would have been left to signalize the wisdom of man- 
kind above that of veriest infancy ? Or, suppose 
that he had the implicit faith in Nature's constancy, 
but that Nature was wanting in the fulfilment of 
it — that at every moment his intuitive reliance on 
this constancy was met by some caprice or way- 
wardness of Nature, which thwarted him in all his 
undertakings — that, instead of holding true to her 
announcements, she held the children of men in most 
distressful uncertainty, by the freaks and the fal- 
sities in which she ever indulged herself — and that 
every design of human foresight was thus liable to 
be broken up, by ever and anon the putting forth of 
some new fluctuation. Tell us, in this wild misrule 
of elements changing their properties, and events 
ever flitting from one method of succession to an- 
other, if man could subsist for a single day, when all 
the accomplishments without were thus at war with 
all the hopes and calculations within. In such a 
chaos and conflict as this, would not the foundations 
of human wisdom be utterly subverted ? Would not 
man, with his powerful and perpetual tendency to 
proceed on the constancy of Nature, be tempted, at 
all times, and by the very constitution of his being, 
to proceed upon a falsehood ? It were the way, in 
fact, to turn the administration of Nature into a 
system of deceit. The lessons of to-day would be 
falsified by the events of to-morrow. He were in- 
deed the father of lies who could be the author of 
such a regimen as this — and well may we rejoice 
in the strict order of the goodly universe which we 



AND FAITHFULNESS OF GOD. 



209 



inhabit, and regard it as a noble attestation to the 
wisdom and beneficence of its great Architect. 

But it is more especially as an evidence of His 
truth that the constancy of Nature is adverted to 
in our text. It is of his faithfulness unto all genera- 
tions that mention is there made ; and for the growth 
and the discipline of your piety, we know not a 
better practical habit than that of recognising the 
unchangeable truth of God, throughout your daily 
and hourly experience of Nature's unchangeableness. 
Your faith in it is of His working — and what a con- 
dition would you have been reduced to, had the 
faith which is within, not been met by an entire and 
unexcepted accordancy with the fulfilments that are 
without ! He has not told you what to expect by 
the utterance of a voice — but He has taught you 
what to expect by the leadings and the intimations 
of a strong constitutional tendency — and in virtue 
of this, there is not a human creature who does not 
believe, and almost as firmly as in his own existence, 
that fire will continue to bum, and water to cool, 
and matter to resist, and unsupported bodies to fall, 
and ocean to bear the adventurous vessel upon its 
surface, and the solid earth to uphold the tread of 
his footsteps ; and that spring will appear again in 
her wonted smiles, and summer will glow into heat 
and brilliancy, and autumn will put on the same 
luxuriance as before, and winter, at her stated 
periods, revisit the world with her darkness and her 
storms. We cannot sum up these countless varieties 
of Nature ; but the firm expectation is, that through- 
out them all, as she has been established, so she will 
abide to the day of her final dissolution. And we 
7 o 



210 



THE CONSTANCY OF NATURE 



call upon you to recognise in Nature's constancy, 
the answer of Nature's God to this expectation. All 
these material agents are, in fact, the organs by 
which He expresses His faithfulness to the world ; 
and that unveering generality which reigns and con- 
tinues everywhere, is but the perpetual demonstra- 
tion of a truth that never varies, as well as of laws 
that never are rescinded. It is for us, that He up- 
holds the world in all its regularity. It is for us, that 
He sustains so unviolably the march and the move- 
ment of those innumerable progressions which are 
going on around us. It is in remembrance of His 
promises to us, that He meets all our anticipations 
of Nature's uniformity, with the evolutions of a law 
that is unalterable. It is because He is a God that 
cannot lie, that He will make no invasion on that 
wondrous correspondency which He himself hath in- 
stituted between the world that is without, and our 
little world of hopes, and projects, and anticipations 
that are within. By the constancy of Nature, He 
hath imprinted upon it the lesson of His own con- 
stancy — and that very characteristic wherewith some 
would fortify the ungodliness of their hearts, is the 
most impressive exhibition which can be given of 
God, as always faithful, and always the same. 

This then, is the real character which the con- 
stancy of Nature should lead us to assign to Him 
who is the Author of it. In every human under- 
standing, He hath planted a universal instinct, by 
which all are led to believe, that Nature will perse- 
vere in her wonted courses, and that each succession 
of cause and effect which has been observed by us 
in the time that is past, will, while the world 



AND FAITHFULNESS OF GOD. 



211 



exists, be kept up invariably, and recur in the very 
same order through the time that is to come. This 
constancy, then, is as good as a promise that He 
has made unto all men, and all that is around us 
on earth or in heaven, proves how inflexibly the 
promise is adhered to. The chemist in his labora- 
tory, as he questions Nature, may be almost said 
to put her to the torture, when tried in his hottest 
furnace, or probed by his searching analysis, to her 
innermost arcana, she by a spark or an explosion, 
or an effervescence, or an evolving substance, makes 
her distinct replies to his investigations. And he 
repeats her answer to all his fellows in philosophy, 
and they meet in academic state and judgment to 
reiterate the question, and in every quarter of the 
globe her answer is the same — so that, let the ex- 
periment, though a thousand times repeated, only be 
alike in all its circumstances, the result which cometh 
forth is as rigidly alike, without deficiency, and 
without deviation. We know how possible it is for 
these worshippers at the footstool of science, to make 
a divinity of matter ; and that every new discovery 
of her secrets, should only rivet them more devotedly 
to her throne. But there is a God who liveth and 
sitteth there, and these unvarying responses of 
Nature, are all prompted by himself, and are but 
the utterances of His immutability. They are the 
replies of a Grod who never changes, and who hath 
adapted the whole materialism of creation to the 
constitution of every mind that He hath sent forth 
upon it. And to meet the expectation which He 
himself hath given of Nature's constancy, is He at 
each successive instant of time, vigilant and ready 



212 



THE CONSTANCY OF NATUKE 



ill every part of His vast dominions, to hold out to 
the eye of all observers, the perpetual and unfailing 
demonstration of it. The certainties of Nature and 
of Science, are in fact the vocables by which God 
announces His truth to the world — and when told 
how impossible it is that Nature can fluctuate, we 
are only told how impossible it is that the God of 
Nature can deceive us. 

The doctrine that Nature is constant when thus 
related, as it ought to be, with the doctrine that God 
is true, might well strengthen our confidence in Him 
anew with every new experience of our history. 
There is not an hour or a moment, in which we may 
not verify the one — and, therefore, not an hour or a 
moment in which we may not invigorate the other. 
Every touch, and every look, and every taste, and 
every act of converse between our senses and the 
things that are without, brings home a new demon- 
stration of the steadfastness of Nature, and along 
with it a new demonstration both of His steadfast- 
ness and of His faithfulness, who is the Governor of 
Nature. And the same lesson may be fetched from 
times and from places, that are far beyond the limits 
of our own personal history. It can be drawn from 
the retrospect of past ages, where from the un- 
varied currency of those very processes which we now 
behold, we may learn the stability of all His ways, 
whose goings forth are of old, and from everlasting. 
It can be gathered from the most distant extremities 
of the earth, where Nature reigns with the same un- 
wearied constancy as it does around us — and where 
savages count as we do on a uniformity, from which 
she never falters. The lesson is commensurate 



AND FAITHFULNESS OF GOD. 



213 



with the whole system of things — and with an efful- 
gence as broad as the face of creation, and as clear 
as the light which is poured over it, does it at once 
tell that Nature Is unchangeably constant, and that 
God is unchangeably true. 

And so it is, that in our text there are presented 
together, as if there was a tie of likeness between 
them — that the same God who is fixed as to the or- 
dinances of Nature, is faithful as to the declarations 
of His word ; and as all experience proves how firmly 
He may be trusted for the one, so is there an argu- 
ment as strong as experience, to prove how firmly 
He may be trusted for the other. By His work in 
us, He hath awakened the expectation of a constancy 
in Nature, which He never disappoints. By His word 
to us, should He awaken the expectation of a cer- 
tainty in His declarations, — this He will never dis- 
appoint. It is because Nature is so fixed, that we 
apprehend the God of Nature to be so faithful. He 
who never falsifies the hope that hath arisen in every 
bosom, from the instinct which He Himself hath 
communicated, will never falsify the hope that shall 
arise in any bosom from the express utterance of 
His voice. Were He a God in whose hand the pro- 
cesses of Nature were ever shifting, then might we 
conceive Him a God from whose mouth the procla- 
mations of grace had the like characters of variance 
and vacillation. But it is just because of our re- 
liance on the one, that we feel so much of repose in 
our dependence upon the other — and the same God 
who is so unfailing in the ordinances of His creation, 
do we hold to be equally unfailing in the ordinances 
of His word. 



214 



THE CONSTANCY OF NATURE 



And it is strikingly accordant with these views, 
that Nature never has been known to recede from 
her constancy, hut for the purpose of giving place 
and demonstration to the authority of the word. 
Once, in a season of miracle, did the word take the 
precedency of Nature, but ever since hath Nature 
resumed her courses, and is now proving', by her 
steadfastness, the authority of that, which she then 
proved to be authentic by her deviations. When the 
word was first ushered in, Nature gave way for a 
period, after which she moves in her wonted order, 
till the present system of things shall pass away, 
and that faith which is now upholden by Nature's 
constancy, shall then receive its accomplishment at 
Nature's dissolution. And, oh how God magnifieth 
His word above all His name, when He tells that 
heaven and earth shall pass away, but that His 
word shall not pass away — and that while His crea- 
tion shall become a wreck, not one jot or one tittle of 
His testimony shall fail. The w r orld passeth away — 
but the word endureth for ever ; and if the faithful- 
ness of God stand forth so legibly on the face of the 
temporary world, how surely may we reckon on the 
faithfulness of that word which has a vastly higher 
place in the counsels and fulfilments of eternity ? 

The argument may not be comprehended by all ; 
but it will not be lost, should it lead any to feel a 
more emphatic certainty and meaning than before 
in the declarations of the Bible — and to conclude, 
that He, who for ages hath stood so fixed to all His 
plans and purposes in Nature, will stand equally 
fixed to all that He proclaims, and to all that He 
promises in Revelation. To be in the hands of such 



AND FAITHFULNESS OF GOD. 



215 



a God, might well strike a terror into the hearts of 
the guilty — and that unrelenting death which, with 
all the sureness of an immutable law, is seen, before 
our eyes, to seize upon every individual of every 
species of our world, full well evinces how He, the 
uncompromising Lawgiver, will execute every utter- 
ance that He has made against the children of ini- 
quity. And on the other hand, how this very con- 
templation ought to encourage all who are looking to 
the announcements of the same God in the Gospel, 
and who perceive that there He has embarked the 
same truth, and the same unchangeableness, on the 
offers of mercy. All Nature gives testimony to this, 
that He cannot lie — and seeing that He has stamped 
such enduring properties on the elements even of 
our perishable world, never should I falter from 
that confidence which He hath taught me to feel, 
when I think of that property wherewith the blood 
which was shed for me, cleanseth from all sin ; and 
of that property wherewith the body which was 
broken, beareth the burden of all its penalties. He 
who hath so nobly met the faith that He has given 
unto all in the constancy of Nature, by a uniformity 
which knows no abatement, will meet the faith that 
He has given unto any in the certainty of grace, by 
a fulfilment unto every believer, which knows no 
exception. 

And it is well to remark the difference that there 
is between the explanation given in the text, of 
Nature's constancy, and the impression which the 
mere students or disciples of Nature have of it. It 
is because of her constancy that they have been led 
to invest her, as it were, in properties of her own ; 



216 



THE CONSTANCY OF NATURE 



that they have given a kind of independent power 
and stability to matter ; that in the various energies 
which lie scattered over the field of visible contem- 
plation, they see a native inherent virtue, which 
never for a single moment is slackened or suspended 
— and therefore imagine, that as no force from with- 
out seems necessary to sustain, so as little, perhaps, 
is there need for any such force from without to ori- 
ginate. The mechanical certainty of all Nature's 
processes, as it appears in their eyes to supersede the 
demand for any upholding agency, so does it also 
supersede, in the silent imaginations of many, and 
according to the express and bold avowals of some, 
the demand for any creative agency. It is thus, that 
Nature is raised into a divinity, and has been made 
to reign over all, in the state and jurisdiction of an 
eternal fatalism ; and proud Science, which by wis- 
dom knoweth not God, hath, in her march of dis- 
covery, seized upon the invariable certainties of 
Nature, those highest characteristics of His authority 
and wisdom and truth, as the instruments by which 
to disprove and to dethrone him. 

Now, compare this interpretation of monstrous and 
melancholy atheism, with that which the Bible gives, 
why all things move so invariably. It is because 
that all are thy servants. It is because they are all 
under the bidding of a God who has purposes from 
which He never falters, and hath issued promises 
from which He never fails. It is because the ar- 
rangements of His vast and capacious household are 
already ordered for the best, and all the elements of 
Nature are the ministers by which He fulfils them. 
That is the master who has most honour and obedi- 



AND FAITHFULNESS OF GOD* 



217 



ence from his domestics, throughout all whose ordi- 
nations there runs a consistency from which he never 
deviates ; and he best sustains his dignity in the 
midst of them, who, by mild but resistless sway, can 
regulate the successions of every hour, and affix his 
sure and appropriate service to every member of the 
family. It is when we see all, in any given time, at 
their respective places, and each distinct period of 
the day having its own distinct evolution of business 
or recreation, that we infer the wisdom of the insti- 
tuted government, and how irrevocable the sanctions 
are by which it is upholden. The vexatious alter- 
nations of command and of countermand ; the end- 
less fancies of humour, and caprice, and waywardness, 
which ever and anon break forth, to the total over- 
throw of system ; the perpetual innovations which 
none do foresee, and for w T hich none, therefore, can 
possibly be prepared — these are not more harassing 
to the subject, than they are disparaging to the truth 
and authority of the superior. It is in the bosom of 
a well-conducted family, where you witness the sure 
dispensation of all the reward and encouragement 
which have been promised, and the unfailing execu- 
tion of the disgrace and the dismissal that are held 
forth to obstinate disobedience. Now those very 
qualities of which this uniformity is the test and the 
characteristic in the government of any human so- 
ciety, of these also is it the test and the character- 
istic in the government of Nature. It bespeaks the 
wisdom, and the authority, and the truth of Him 
who framed and w T ho administers. Let there be a 
King eternal, immortal, and invisible, and let this 
universe be His empire — and in all the rounds of its 



218 



THE CONSTANCY OF NATURE 



complex but unerring mechanism, do I recognise him 
as the only wise God. In the constancy of Nature, 
do I read the constancy and truth of that great mas- 
ter Spirit, who hath imprinted His own character on 
all that hath emanated from His power ; and when 
told that throughout the mighty lapse of centuries, 
all the courses both of earth and of heaven, have 
been upholden as before, I only recognise the foot- 
steps of Him who is ever the same, and whose faith- 
fulness is unto all generations. That perpetuity, and 
order, and ancient law of succession, which have sub- 
sisted so long, throughout the wide diversity of 
things, bear witness to the Lord of hosts, as still at 
the head of His well-marshalled family. The present 
age is only re-echoing the lesson of all past ages — - 
and that spectacle, which has misled those who by 
wisdom know not God, into dreary atheism, has en- 
hanced every demonstration both of His veracity 
and power to all intelligent worshippers. We 
know that all things continue as they were from 
the beginning of creation. We know that the whole 
of surrounding materialism stands forth, to this very 
hour, in all the inflexibility of her wonted characters. 
We know that heaven, and earth, and sea, still 
discharge the same functions, and subserve the very 
same beneficent processes. We know that astro- 
nomy plies the same rounds as before, that the cycles 
of the firmament move in their old and appointed 
order, and that the year circulates, as it has ever 
done, in grateful variety, over the face of an expec- 
tant world — but only because all are of God, and 
they continue this day according to His ordinances — 
for all are His servants. 



AND FAITHFULNESS OF GOD. 



219 



Now it is just because the successions which take 
place in the economy of Nature, are so invariable, 
that we should expect the successions which take 
place in the economy of God's moral government to 
be equally invariable. That expectation which He 
never disappoints when it is the fruit of a univer- 
sal instinct, He surely will never disappoint when 
it is the fruit of his own express and immediate re- 
velation. If because God hath so established it, it 
cometh to pass, then of whatsoever it may be affirm- 
ed that God hath so said it, it will come equally to 
pass. I should certainly look for the same charac- 
ter in the administrations of His special grace, that 
I at all times witness in the administrations of His 
ordinary providence. If I see in the system of His 
world, that the law by which two events follow each 
other, gives rise to a connexion between them that 
never is dissolved, then should He say in His word, 
that there are certain invariable methods of succes- 
sion, in virtue of which, when the first term of it oc- 
curs, the second is sure at all times to follow, I should 
be very sure in my anticipations, that it will indeed 
be most punctually and most rigidly so. It is thus 
that the constancy of Nature is in fullest harmony 
with the authority of Revelation — and that, when 
fresh from the contemplation of the one, I would 
listen with most implicit faith to all the announce- 
ments of the other. 

When we behold all to be so sure and settled in 
the works of God, then may we look for all being 
equally sure and settled in the word of God. Philo- 
sophy hath never yet detected one iota of deviation 
from the ordinances of Nature — and never, there- 



220 THE CONSTANCY OF NATURE 

fore, may we conclude, shall the experience either of 
past or future ages, detect one iota of deviation from 
the ordinances of Revelation. He who so pointedly 
adheres to every plan that He hath established in 
creation, will as pointedly adhere to every procla- 
mation that He hath uttered in Scripture. There is 
nought of the fast and loose in any of His processes 
— and whether in the terrible denunciations of Sinai, 
or those mild proffers of mercy that were sounded 
forth upon the world through Messiah, who uphold- 
eth all things by the word of His power, shall we 
alike experience that God is not to be mocked, and 
that with Him there is no variableness, neither 
shadow of turning. 

With this certainty, then, upon our spirits, let us 
now look not to the successions which He hath insti- 
tuted in Nature, but to the successions which He 
hath announced to us in the word of His testimony 
— and let us, while so doing, fix and solemnize our 
thoughts by the consideration, that as God hath said 
it, so will He do it. 

The first of these successions, then, on which we 
may count infallibly, is that which He hath pro- 
claimed between sin and punishment. The soul 
that sinneth it shall die. And here there is a com- 
mon ground on which the certainties of divine re- 
velation meet and are at one with the certainties 
of human experience. We are told in the Bible 
that all have sinned, and that therefore death hath 
passed upon all men. The connexion between these 
two terms is announced in Scripture to be invariable 
— and all observation tells us, that it is even so. 
Such was the sentence uttered in the hearing of our 



AND FAITHFULNESS OF GOD. 



221 



first parents ; and all history can attest how God 
hath kept by the word of His threatening — and how 
this law of jurisprudence from heaven is realized be- 
fore us upon earth, with all the certainty of a law of 
Nature. The death of man is just as stable and as 
essential a part of his physiology, as are his birth, 
or his expansion, or his maturity, or his decay. It 
looks as much a thing of organic necessity, as a thing 
of arbitrary institution — and here do we see blend- 
ed into one exhibition, a certainty of the divine word 
that never fails, and a constancy in Nature that 
never is departed from. It is indeed a striking ac- 
cordancy that what in one view of it appears to be 
a uniform process of Nature, in another view of it, 
is but the unrelenting execution of a dread utter- 
ance from the God of Nature. From this contem- 
plation, may we gather, that God is as certain in all 
His words, as He is constant in all His ways. Men 
can philosophize on the diseases of the human sys- 
tem — and the laborious treatise can be written on 
the class, and the character, and the symptoms, of 
each of them — and in our halls of learning, the 
ample demonstration can be given, and disciples 
may be taught how to judge and to prognosticate, 
and in what appearances to read the fell precursors 
of mortality — and death has so taken up its settled 
place among the immutabilities of Nature, that it is 
as familiarly treated in the lecture-rooms of science, 
as any other phenomena which Nature has to offer 
for the exercise of the human understanding. And, 
oh how often are the smile and the stoutness of in- 
fidelity seen to mingle with this appalling contem- 
plation — and how little will its hardy professors bear 



222 



THE CONSTANCY OF NATURE 



to be told, that what gives so dread a certainty to 
their speculation is, that the God of Nature and the 
God of the Bible, are one — that when they de- 
scribe, in lofty nomenclature, the path of dying 
humanity, they only describe the way in which He 
fulfils upon it His irrevocable denunciation — that 
He is but doing now to the posterity of Adam what 
He told to Adam himself on his expulsion from para- 
dise — and that if the universality of death prove 
how every law in the physics of creation is sure, it 
just as impressively proves, how every word of God's 
immediate utterance to man, or how every word of 
prophecy is equally sure. 

And in every instance of mortality which you are 
called to witness, do we call upon you to read in it 
the intolerance of God for sin, and how unsparingly 
and unrelentingly it is, that God carries into effect 
His every utterance against it. The connexion 
which He hath instituted between the two terms of 
sin and of death, should lead you from every appeal 
that is made to your senses by the one, to feel the 
force of an appeal to your conscience by the other. 
It proves the hatefulness of sin to God, and it also 
proves with what unfaltering constancy God will 
prosecute every threat, until He hath made an utter 
extirpation of sin from His presence. There is 
nought which can make more palpable the way in 
which God keeps every saying in His perpetual re- 
membrance, and as surely proceeds upon it, than 
doth this universal plague wherewith He hath 
smitten every individual of our species, and carries 
off its successive generations from a world that 
sprung from His hand in all the bloom and vigour 



AND FAITHFULNESS OF GOD. 



223 



of immortality. When death makes entrance upon 
a family, and, perhaps, seizes on that one member of 
it, all whose actual transgressions might be summed 
up in the outbreakings of an occasional wayward- 
ness, wherewith the smiles of infant gaiety were 
chequered — still how it demonstrates the unbending 
purposes of God against our present accursed nature, 
that in some one or other of its varieties, every 
specimen must die. And so it is, that from one 
age to another, He makes open manifestation to the 
world, that every utterance which hath fallen from 
him is sure ; and that ocular proof is given to the 
character of Him who is a Spirit, and is invisible ; 
and that sense lends its testimony to the truth of 
God, and the truth of His Scripture ; and that Na- 
ture, when rightly viewed, instead of placing its in- 
quirers at atheistical variance with the Being who 
upholds it, holds out to us the most impressive com- 
mentary that can be given, on the reverence which 
is due to all His communications, even by demon- 
strating, that faith in His word is at unison with the 
findings of our daily observation. 

But God hath further said of sin and of its con- 
sequences, what no observation of ours has yet 
realized. He hath told us of the judgment that 
cometh after death, and He hath told us of the two 
diverse paths which lead from the judgment-seat 
unto eternity. Of these we have not yet seen the 
verification, yet surely we have now seen enough to 
prepare us for the unfailing accomplishment of every 
utterance that cometh from the lips of God. The 
unexcepted death which we know cometh upon all 
men, for that all have sinned, might well convince 



224 



THE CONSTANCY OF NATURE 



us of the certainty of that second death which is 
threatened upon all who turn not from sin unto the 
Saviour. There is an indissoluble succession here 
between our sinning and our dying — and we ought 
now to be so aware of God as a God of precise and 
peremptory execution, as to look upon the succes- 
sion being equally indissoluble, between our dying 
in sin now, and rising to everlasting condemnation 
hereafter. The sinner who wraps himself in delu- 
sive security, and who, because all things continue 
as they have done, does not reflect of this very char- 
acteristic, that it is indeed the most awful proof of 
God's immutable counsels, and to himself the most 
tremendous presage of all the ruin and wretched- 
ness which have been denounced upon him, — the 
spectacle of uniformity that is before his eyes, only 
goes to ascertain that as God hath purposed, so, 
without vacillation or inconstancy, will He ever per- 
form. He hath already given a sample, or an earn- 
est of this, in the awful ravages of death ; and we 
ask the sinner to behold, in the ever-recurring spec- 
tacle of moving funerals, and desolated families, the 
token of that still deeper perdition which awaits him. 
Let him not think that the God who deals His re- 
lentless inflictions here on every son and daughter 
of the species, will falter there from the work of ven- 
geance that shall then descend on the heads of the 
impenitent. Oh, how deceived then are all those un- 
godly, who have been building to themselves a safety 
and an exemption on the perpetuity of Nature ! All 
the perpetuity which they have witnessed is the 
pledge of a God who is unchangeable — and who, true 
to His threatening as to every other utterance which 



AND FAITHFULNESS OF GOD. 



225 



passes his lips, hath said, in the hearing of men and 
of angels, that the soul which is in sin shall perish. 
But, secondly, there is another succession an- 
nounced to us in Scripture, and on the certainty of 
whieh we may place as firm a reliance as on any of 
the observed successions of Nature — even that which 
obtains between faith and salvation. He who be- 
lieveth in Christ, shall not perish, but shall have 
life everlasting. The same truth which God hath 
embarked on the declarations of his wrath against 
the impenitent, He hath also embarked on the de- 
clarations of His mercy to the believer. There is a 
law of continuity, as unfailing as any series of events 
in Nature, that binds with the present state of an 
obstinate sinner upon earth, all the horrors of his 
future wretchedness in hell ; but there is also an- 
other law of continuity just as unfailing, that binds 
the present state of him who putteth faith in Christ 
here, with the triumphs and the transports of his 
coming glory hereafter. And thus it is, that what 
we read of God's constancy in the book of Nature, 
may well strengthen our every assurance in the pro- 
mises of the Gospel. It is not in the recurrence of 
winter alone, and its desolations, that God manifests 
His adherence to established processes. There are 
many periodic evolutions of the bright and the beau- 
tiful along the march of His administrations — as the 
dawn of morn ; and the grateful access of spring, 
with its many hues, and odours, and melodies ; and 
the ripened abundance of harvest ; and that glorious 
arch of heaven, which Science hath now appropri- 
ated as her own, but which nevertheless is placed 
there by God as the unfailing token of a sunshine 
7 p 



226 



THE CONSTANCY OF NATURE 



already begun, and a storm now ended — all these 
come forth at appointed seasons, in a consecutive 
order, yet mark the footsteps of a beneficent Deity. 
And so the economy of grace has its regular suc- 
cessions, which carry, however, a blessing in their 
train. The faith in Christ, to which we are invited 
upon earth, has its sure result, and its landing-place 
in heaven — and just with as unerring certainty as 
we behold in the courses of the firmament, will it be 
followed up by a life of virtue, and a death of hope, 
and a resurrection of joyfulness, and a voice of wel- 
come at the judgment-seat, and a bright ascent into 
fields of ethereal blessedness, and an entrance upon 
glory, and a perpetual occupation in the city of the 
living God. 

To all men hath He given a faith in the constancy 
of Nature, and He never disappoints it. To some 
men hath He given a faith in the promises of the 
Gospel, and He is ready to bestow it upon all who 
ask, or to perfect that which is lacking in it — and 
the one faith will as surely meet with its correspond- 
ing fulfilment as the other. The invariableness that 
reigns throughout the kingdom of Nature, guaran- 
tees the like invariableness in the kingdom of grace. 
He who is steadfast to all His appointments will be 
true to all His declarations — and those very exhibi- 
tions of a strict and undeviating order in our uni- 
verse, which have ministered to the irreligion of a 
spurious philosophy, form a basis on which the be- 
liever can prop a firmer confidence than before, in 
nil the spoken and all the written testimonies of 
God. 

With a man of taste, and imagination, and science, 



AND FAITHFULNESS OF GOD. 



227 



and who is withal a disciple of the Lord Jesus, such 
an argument as this must shed a new interest and 
glory over his whole contemplation of visible things. 
He knows of his Saviour, that by Him all things 
were made, and that by Him too all things are up- 
holden. The world, in fact, was created by that 
Being whose name is the Word ; and from the 
features that are imprinted on the one, may he 
gather some of the leading characteristics of the 
other. More expressly will he infer from that sure 
and established order of Nature, in which the whole 
family of mankind are comprehended, that the more 
special family of believers are indeed encircled with- 
in the bond of a sure and a well-ordered covenant. 
In those beauteous regularities by which the one 
economy is marked, will he be led to recognise the 
" yea " and the " amen " which are stamped on the 
other economy — and when he learns that the cer- 
tainties of science are unfailing, does he also learn 
that the sayings of Scripture are unalterable. Both 
he knows to emanate from the same source ; and 
every new experience of Nature's constancy, will 
just rivet him more tenaciously than before to the 
doctrine and the declarations of his Bible. Fur- 
nished with such a method of interpretation as this, 
let him go abroad upon Nature, and all that he sees 
will heighten and establish the hopes which Re- 
velation hath awakened. Every recurrence of the 
same phenomena as before, will be to him a distinct 
testimony to the faithfulness of God. The very 
hours will bear witness to it. The lengthening 
shades of even will repeat the lesson held out to 
him by the light of early day — and when night un- 



228 THE CONSTANCY OF NATURE 



veils to his eye the many splendours of the firma- 
ment, will every traveller on his circuit there, speak 
to him of that mighty and invisible King, all whose 
ordinations are sure. And this manifestation from 
the face of heaven will be reflected to him by the 
panorama upon earth. Even the buds which come 
forth at their appointed season on the leafless 
branches ; and the springing up of the flowers and 
the herbage on the spots of ground from which they 
had disappeared ; and that month of vocal harmony 
wherewith the mute atmosphere is gladdened as 
before, with the notes of joyous festival ; and so, 
the regular march of the advancing year through all 
its footsteps of revival, and progress, and maturity, 
and decay — these are to him but the diversified 
tokens of a God whom he can trust, because of a 
God who changeth not. To his eyes, the world re- 
flects upon the word the lesson of its own wondrous 
harmony ; and his science, instead of a meteor that 
lures from the greater light of Revelation serves 
him as a pedestal on which the stability of Scrip- 
ture is more firmly upholden. 

The man who is accustomed to view aright the 
uniformity of Nature's sequences, will be more im- 
pressed with the certainty of that sequence, which 
is announced in the Bible between faith and sal- 
vation — and he of all others should re-assure his 
hopes of immortality, when he reads, that the end of 
our faith is the salvation of our souls. In this secure 
and wealthy place let him take up his rest, and re- 
joice himself greatly with that God who has so multi- 
plied upon him the evidences of His faithfulness. 
Let him henceforth feel that he is in the hands of 



AND FAITHFULNESS OF GOD. 



229 



one who never deviates, and who cannot lie — and 
who, as He never by one act of caprice hath mocked 
the dependence that is built on the foundation of 
human experience, so never by one act of treachery 
will He mock the dependence that is built on the 
foundation of the divine testimony. And more par- 
ticularly, let him think of Christ who hath all the 
promises in His hand, that to him also all power has 
been committed in heaven and in earth — and that 
presiding therefore, as he does, over that visible ad- 
ministration, of which constancy is the unfailing 
attribute, He by this hath given us the best pledge 
of a truth that abideth the same, to-day, and yester- 
day, and for ever. 

We are aware, that no argument can of itself 
work in you the faith of the Gospel — that words, and 
reasons, and illustrations, may be multiplied without 
end, and yet be of no efficacy — that if the simple 
manifestation of the Spirit be withheld, the expound- 
er of Scripture, and of all its analogies with Creation 
or Providence, will lose his labour — and while it is 
his part to prosecute these to the uttermost, yet 
nought will he find more surely and experimentally 
true, than that without a special interposition of 
light from on high, he runneth in vain, and wearieth 
himself in vain. It is for him to ply the instrument, 
it is for God to give unto it the power which avail- 
eth. We are told of Christ on His throne of media- 
torship, that He hath all the energies of Nature at 
command, and up to this hour do we know with 
what a steady and unfaltering hand He hath wielded 
them. Look to the promise as equally steadfast, of 
"Lo, I am with you always, even unto the, end of 



230 



THE CONSTANCY OF NATURE 



the world" — and come even now to His own appoint- 
ed ordinance in the like confidence of a fellowship 
with Him, as you would to any of the scenes or ordi- 
nations of Nature, and in the confidence that there 
the Lord of Nature will prove himself the same that 
He has ever been.* The blood that was announced 
many centuries ago to cleanse from all sin, cleanseth 
still. The body which hath borne in all past ages 
the iniquity of believers, beareth it still. That faith 
which appropriates Christ and all the benefits of His 
purchase to the soul, still performs the same office. 
And that magnificent economy of Nature which was 
established at the first, and so abideth, is but the 
symbol of that higher economy of grace which con- 
tinueth to this day according to all its ordinances. 

" Whosoever eateth my flesh, and drinketh my 
blood/' says the Saviour, " shall never die." When 
you sit down at His table, you eat the bread, and 
you drink the wine by which these are represented 
— and if this be done worthily, if there be a right 
correspondence between the hand and the heart in 
this sacramental service, then by faith do you re- 
ceive the benefits of the shed blood, and the broken 
body ; and your so doing will as surely as any suc- 
cession takes place in the instituted courses of 
Nature, be followed up by your blessed immortality. 
And the brighter your hopes of glory hereafter, the 
holier will you be in all your acts and affections here. 
The character even now will receive a tinge from 
the prospect that is before you — and the habitual 
anticipation of heaven will bring down both of its 

* This Sermon was delivered on the morning of a Communion 
Sabbath. 



AND FAITHFULNESS OF GOD. 



231 



charity and its sacredness upon your heart. He 
who hath this hope in him purifieth himself even as 
Christ is pure — and even from the present, if a true 
approach to the gate of His sanctuary, will you carry 
a portion of His spirit away with you. In par- 
taking of these His consecrated elements, you be- 
come partakers of His gentleness and devotion, and 
unwearied beneficence — and because like Him in 
time, you will live with Him through eternity. 



232 



EFFICACY OF PRAYER 



DISCOURSE II. 

ON THE CONSISTENCY BETWEEN THE EFFICACY OF 
PRAYER AND THE UNIFORMITY OF NATURE. 



u Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, 
walking after their own lusts,— and saying, Where is the promise of 
his coming ? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as 
they were from the beginning of the creation." — 2 Peter iii. 3, 4. 

The infidelity spoken of in our text, had for its 
basis the stability of Nature, or rested on the imagina- 
tion that her economy was perpetual and everlasting 
— and every day of Nature's continuance added to the 
strength and inveteracy of this delusion. In propor- 
tion to the length of her past endurance, was there 
a firm confidence felt in her future perpetuity. The 
longer that Nature lasted, or the older she grew, her 
final dissolution was held to be all the more impro- 
bable — till nothing seemed so unlikely to the atheis- 
tical men of that period, as the intervention of a God 
with a system of visible things, which looked so un- 
changing and so indestructible. It was like the con- 
test of experience and faith, in which the former grew 
every day stronger and stronger, and the latter weaker 
and weaker, till at length it was wholly extinguish- 
ed ; and men in the spirit of defiance or ridicule, 
braved the announcement of a Judge who should 
appear at the end of the world, and mocked at the 
promise of His coming. 



AND UNIFORMITY OF NATURE. 



233 



But there is another direction which infidelity 
often takes, beside the one specified in our text. It 
not only perverts to its own argument, what experi- 
ence tells of the stability of Nature ; and so con- 
cludes that we have nothing to fear from the man- 
date of a God laying sudden arrest and termination 
on its processes. It also perverts what experience 
tells of the uniformity of Nature ; and so concludes 
that we have nothing either to hope or to fear from 
the intervention of a God during the continuance or 
the currency of these processes. Beside making 
Nature independent of God for its duration, which 
they hold to be everlasting, they would also make 
Nature to be independent of God for its course, which 
they hold to be unalterable. They tell us of the rigid 
and undeviating constancy from w r hich Nature is 
never known to fluctuate ; and that in her immu- 
table laws in the march and regularity of her orderly 
progressions, they can discover no trace whatever of 
any interposition by the finger of a Deity. It is not 
only that all things continue to be as they were 
from the beginning of creation ; but that all things 
continue to act as they did from the beginning of 
the creation — causes and effects following each other 
in w r onted and invariable succession, and the same 
circumstances ever issuing in the same consequents 
as before. With such a system of things, there is 
no room in their creed or in their imagination for 
the actings of a God. To their eye Nature pro- 
ceeds by the sure footsteps of a mute and uncon- 
scious materialism; nor can they recognise in its 
evolutions those characters of the spontaneous or the 
wilful, which bespeak a living God to have had any 



234 



EFFICACY OF PRAYER 



concern with it. He may have formed the mundane 
system at the first : He may have devised for matter 
its properties and its laws: but these properties, 
they tell us, never change ; these laws never are re- 
laxed or receded from. And so we may as well bid 
the storm itself cease from its violence, as supplicate 
the unseen Being whom we fancy to be sitting aloft 
and to direct the storm. This they hold to be a 
superstitious imagination, which all their experi- 
ence of Nature and of Nature's immutability forbids 
them to entertain. By the one infidelity, they have 
banished a God from the throne of judgment. By 
the other infidelity, they have banished a God from 
the throne of providence. By the first, they tell us 
that a God has nought to do with the consummation 
of Nature; or rather, that Nature lias no consumma- 
tion. By the second, they tell us that a God has 
nought to do with the history of Nature. The first 
infidelity would expunge from our creed the doc- 
trine of a coming judgment. The second would ex- 
punge from it the doctrine of a present and a special 
providence, and the doctrine of the efficacy of prayer. 

Now this last, though not just the infidelity of the 
text — yet being very much the same with it in prin- 
ciple — we hold it sufficiently textual, though we 
make it, and not the other, the subject of our present 
argument. We admit the uniformity of visible na- 
ture — a lesson forced upon us by all experience. We 
admit that as far as our observation extends, Nature 
has always proceeded in one invariable order — inso- 
much that the same antecedents have, without ex- 
ception, been ever followed up by the same conse- 
quents ; and that, saving the well accredited miracles 



AND UNIFORMITY OF NATURE. 



235 



of the Jewish and Christian dispensations, all things 
have so continued since the beginning of the creation. 

We admit that, never in our whole lives have we 
witnessed as the effect of man's prayer, any infringe- 
ment made on the known laws of the universe ; or 
that Nature by receding from her constancy, to the 
extent that w r e have discovered it, has ever in one in- 
stance yielded to his supplicating cry. We admit 
that by no importunity from the voice of faith, or from 
any number and combination of voices, have we seen 
an arrest or a shift laid on the ascertained courses, 
whether of the material or the mental economy ; or 
a single fulfilment of any sort, brought about in con- 
travention, either to the known properties of any 
substance, or to the known principles of any estab- 
lished succession in the history of Nature. These 
are our experiences ; and we are aware the very ex- 
periences which ministered to the infidelity of our 
text, and do minister to the practical infidelity of thou- 
sands in the present day — yet, in opposition to, or 
rather notwithstanding these experiences, universal 
and unexcepted though they be, do we affirm the 
doctrine of a superintending providence, as various 
and as special, as our necessities — the doctrine of a 
perpetual interposition from above, as manifoldly and 
minutely special, as are the believing requests which 
ascend from us to Heaven's throne. 

We feel the importance of the subject, both in 
its application to the judgment that now hangs over 
us,* and to the infidelity of the present times. But 
we cannot hope to be fully understood without your 
most strenuous and sustained attention — an atten- 

* This sermon was preached during the prevalence of cholera. 



236 



EFFICACY OF PRAYER 



tion, however, which we request may be kept up to 
the end, even though certain parts in the train of 
observation may not have been followed by you. 
What some may lose in those passages, where the 
subject is presented in the form of a general argu- 
ment, may again be recovered, when we attempt to 
establish our doctrine by Scripture, or to illustrate it 
by instances taken from the history of human affairs. 
In one way or other, you may seize on the reigning 
principle of that explanation, by which we endeavour 
to reconcile the efficacy of prayer with the uniformity 
of experience. And our purpose shall have been ob- 
tained, if we can at all help you to a greater confi- 
dence in the reality of a superintending providence, 
to a greater comfort and confidence in the act of 
making your requests known unto God. 

Let us first give our view in all its generality, in the 
hope that any obscurity which may rest upon it in this 
form will be dissipated or cleared up in the subse- 
quent appeals that we shall make, both to the lessons 
of the Bible, and to the lessons of human experience. 

We grant then, we unreservedly grant, the uni- 
formity of visible nature ; and now let us compute 
how much, or how little, it amounts to. Grant of 
all our progressions, that, as far as our eye can carry 
us, they are invariable ; and then let us only reflect 
how short a way we can trace any of them upwards. 
In speculating on the origin of an event, we maybe 
able to assign the one which immediately preceded, 
and term it the proximate cause ; or even ascend by 
two or three footsteps, till we have discovered some 
anterior event which we term the remote cause. 
But how soon do we arrive at the limit of possible 



AND UNIFORMITY OF NATURE. 



237 



investigation, beyond which if we attempt to go, we 
lose ourselves among the depths and the obscurities 
of a region that is unknown ? Observation may con- 
duct us a certain length backwards in the train of 
causes and effects ; but, after having done its utter- 
most, we feel, that, above and beyond its loftiest 
place of ascent, there are still higher steps in the 
train, which we vainly try to reach, and find them 
inaccessible. It is even so throughout all philo- 
sophy. After having arrived at the remotest cause 
which man can reach his way to, we shall ever find 
there are higher and remoter causes still, which dis- 
tance all his powers of research, and so will ever re- 
main in deepest concealment from his view. Of this 
higher part of the train he has no observation. Of 
these remoter causes, and their mode of succession, 
he can positively say nothing. For aught he knows, 
they may be under the immediate control of higher 
beings in the universe ; or, like the upper part of a 
chain, a few of whose closing links are all that is 
visible to us, they may be directly appended to the 
throne, and at all times subject to the instant plea- 
sure of a prayer-hearing God. And it may be by a 
responsive touch at the higher, and not the low r er 
part of the progression, that He answers our prayers. 
It may be not by an act of intervention among those 
near and visible causes, where intervention would be 
a miracle ; it may be by an unseen, but not less 
effectual act of intervention, among the remote and 
therefore the occult causes, that He adapts Himself 
to the various wants, and meets the various petitions 
of His children. If it be in the latter way that He 
conducts the affairs of His daily government — then 



238 EFFICACT OF PRAYKR 

m 

may He rule by a providence as special as are the 
needs and the occasions of His family ; and with an 
ear open to every cry, might He provide for all, and 
minister to all, without one infringement on the uni- 
formity of visible nature. If the responsive touch 
be given at the lower part of the chain, then the 
answer to prayer is by miracle, or by a contravention 
to some of the known sequences of Nature. But if 
the responsive touch be given at a sufficiently higher 
part of the chain, then the answer is as effectually 
made, but not by miracle, and without violence to 
any one succession of history or nature which philo- 
sophy has ascertained — because the reaction to the 
prayer strikes at a place that is higher than the 
highest investigations of philosophy. It is not by a 
visible movement within the region of human obser- 
vation, but by an invisible movement in the tran- 
scendental region above it, that the prayer is met 
and responded to. The Supernal Power of the Uni- 
verse, the mighty and unseen Being who sits aloft, 
and has been significantly styled the Cause of causes 
— He, in immediate contact with the upper extremi- 
ties of every progression, there puts forth an over- 
ruling influence which tells and propagates down- 
wards to the lower extremities ; and so, by an agency 
placed too remote either for the eye of sense or for 
all the instruments of science to discover, may God, 
in answer if He choose to prayer, fix and determine 
every series of events — of which, nevertheless, all 
that man can see is but the uniformity of the closing 
footsteps — a few of the last causes and effects follow- 
ing each other in their wonted order. It is thus 
that we reconcile all the experience which man has 



AND UNIFORMITY OF NATURE. 



239 



of Nature's uniformity, with the effect and significancy 
of his prayers to the God of Nature. It is thus that 
at one and the same time do we live under the care 
of a presiding God, and among the regularities of a 
harmonious universe. 

These views are in beautiful accordance with the 
simple and sublime theology unfolded to us in the 
book of Job — where, whether in the movements of 
the animated kingdom below, or the great evolutions 
that take place in the upper regions, of the atmos- 
phere, the phenomena and the processes of visible 
nature are sketched with a masterly hand. It is in 
the midst of these scenes and impressive descriptions, 
that we are told — " Lo, these are parts of His ways/' 
The translation does not say what parts; but the 
original does. They are but the lower parts — the 
endings as it w r ere of the different processes — the 
last and lowest footsteps, which are all that science 
can investigate ; and of which, throughout the whole 
of her limited ascent, she has traced the uniformity. 
But she has traced it a very short way : or, in the 
language of the patriarch, who estimates aright the 
achievements of philosophy — how little a portion is 
heard of Him — how few the known footsteps which 
are beneath the veil to the unknown steps and work- 
ings which are above it ; and so, the thunder, or 
rather the inward and secret movements of His power, 
who can understand ? 

" He bindeth up the waters in his thick clouds ; 
and the cloud is not rent under them. He holdeth 
back the face of his throne, and spreadeth his cloud 
upon it. He hath compassed the waters with bounds, 
until the day and night come to an end. The pil- 



240 



EFFICACY OF PRATER 



lars of heaven tremble, and are astonished at his 
reproof. He divideth the sea with his power, and 
by his understanding he smiteth through the proud. 
By his Spirit he hath garnished the heavens ; his 
hand hath formed the crooked serpent. Lo, these 
are parts of his ways ; but how little a portion is 
heard of him ? but the thunder of his power who 
can understand?" — Job xxvi. 8-14. 

The last sentence of this magnificent passage were 
better translated thus : — These are the parts or the 
lower endings of his ways ; but the secret working 
of his power, who can understand ? 

That part of the economy of the divine adminis- 
tration, in virtue of which God works, not without 
but by secondary causes, is frequently intimated in 
the book of Psalms. 

ci Who maketh his angels spirits, his ministers a 
flaming fire/' — Ps. civ. 4. 

Or, as it might have been translated — " Who 
maketh the w r inds his messengers, and the flaming 
fire his servant/' 

But without the aid of any emendations in our 
version, this subserviency of visible nature to the in- 
visible God, is distinctly laid before us in the fol- 
lowing passages. 

" They that go down to the sea in ships, that do 
business in great waters ; these see the works of 
the Lord, and his wonders in the deep. For he com- 
mandeth, and raiseth the stormy wind, which lifteth 
up the waves thereof. They mount up to the heaven, 
they go down again to the depths ; their soul is 
melted because of trouble. They reel to and fro, 
and stagger like a drunken man, and are at their 



AXD UNIFORMITY OF NATURE. 



241 



wit's end. Then they cry unto the Lord in their 
trouble, and he bringeth them out of their distresses. 
He maketh the storm a calm, so that the waves 
thereof are still Then are they glad, because they 
be quiet ; so he bringeth them unto their desired 
haven. Oh, that men would praise the Lord for 
his goodness, and for his wonderful works to the 
children of men/' — Psalm evil 23-31. 

He raises the tempest not without the wind, but 
by the wind. In the one way it would have been 
a miracle ; in the other way it is alike effectual, but 
without any change in the properties or Jaws of 
visible nature — without what we commonly under- 
stand by a miracle. He does not bring the vessel 
against the wind to its desired haven ; but He makes 
the storm a calm, and so the waves thereof are still. 
Our Saviour also bade the winds into peace ; and the 
miracle there lay in the effect following on the heard 
utterance of His voice. A voice no less effectual 
though unheard by us, overrules at all times the 
working of Nature's elements ; and brings the or- 
dinary processes, as well as the marked and mira- 
culous exception to them, under the control of a 
divine agency. 

' " Whatsoever the Lord pleased, that did he in 
heaven, and in earth, in the seas, and all deep 
places. He causeth the vapours to ascend from the 
ends of the earth ; he maketh lightnings for the 
rain ; he bringeth the wind out of his treasuries." — 
Psalm exxxv. 6, 7. 

Here, without any change of translation, we are 
told of the subserviency of the visible instruments, 
to the invisible but real agency of Him who wields 
7 Q 



242 



EFFICACY OF PRAYER 



tliem at his pleasure. In this passage, the winds 
are plainly represented to us as the messengers of 
God, and the flaming fire as His servant. He changes 
no properties, and no visible processes — working, not 
without the wind, but by it — not without the electric 
matter, but by it — not without the rain, but by it — - 
not without the vapour, but by it. Let the philo- 
sopher tell how far back he can go, in exploring the 
method and order of these respective agencies. Then 
we have only to point further back and ask — on what 
evidence he can tell, that the fiat and the finger 
of a God are not there ? We grant the observed 
order to be invariable, save when God chooses to in- 
terpose by miracle. But whether He does or not — 
from that chamber of His hidden operations, which 
philosophy has not found its way to, can He so di- 
rect all, so subordinate all, that whatever the Lord 
pleases, that does He in heaven and in earth, in the 
seas, and all deep places. 

" Praise the Lord from the earth, ye dragons, and 
all deeps : Fire and hail ; snow and vapour ; stormy 
wind fulfilling his word." — Psalm cxlviii. 7, 8. 

The stormy wind fulfilleth His word. 

Our last example shall be from the new Testa- 
ment. " Nevertheless he left not himself without 
witness, in that he did good, and gave us rain from 
heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with 
food and gladness/' — Acts xiv. 17. 

This last example will prepare you to go along with 
one of the particular instances we are just to bring for- 
ward, of a special prayer met by a special fulfilment. 

We are thus enabled to perceive what the respec- 
tive provinces are of philosophy and faith. Every 



AND UNIFORMITY OF NATURE. 



243 



event in Nature or history has a cause in some prior 
event that went before it, and that again in another, 
and that again in another still higher than itself in 
this scale of precedency ; and so might we climb 
our ascending way from cause to cause, from conse- 
quent to antecedent — till the investigation has been 
carried upwards, from the farthest possible verge of 
human discovery. There it is that the domain of 
observation or of philosophy terminates ; but we mis- 
take, if we think that there the progression, whose 
terms or whose footsteps we have traced thus far, 
also terminates. Beyond this limit we cannot track 
the pathway of causation — not because the pathway 
ceases, but because we have lost sight of it — having 
now retired from view among the depths and mys- 
teries of an unknown region, which we, with our 
bounded faculties, cannot enter. This may be termed 
the region of faith, placed as it were above the 
region of experience. The things which are done in 
the higher, have an overruling influence by lines of 
transmission on all that happens in the lower — yet 
without one breach or interruption to the uniformity 
of visible nature. Whatever is done in the transcen- 
dental region — be it by the influence of prayer ; by 
the immediate finger of God ; by the ministry of 
angels ; by the spontaneous movements, whether of 
displeasure or of mercy above, responding to the sins 
or to the supplicating cries that ascend from earth's 
inhabitants below — that will pass by a descending 
influence into the palpable region of sense and ob- 
servation — yet, from the moment it comes within its 
limits, will it proceed without the semblance of a 
miracle, but by the march and the movement of 



244 



EFFJCACY OF PKATKR 



Nature's regularity, to its final consummation. God 
hath in wisdom ordained a regimen of general laws ; 
and that man might gather from the memory of the 
past those lessons of observation which serve for the 
guidance of the future, He hath enacted that all 
those successions shall be invariable which have 
their place and their fulfilment within the world of 
sensible experience. Yet God has not on that ac- 
count made the world independent of Himself. He 
keeps a perpetual hold on all its events and processes 
notwithstanding. He does not dissever Himself, for 
a single instant, from the government and the guar- 
dianship of His own universe ; and can still, not- 
withstanding all we see of Nature's rigid uniformity, 
adapt the forthgoings of His power to all the wants 
and all the prayers of His dependent family. For 
this purpose, He does not need to stretch forth His 
hand on the inferior and the visible links of any pro- 
gression, so as to shift the known successions of ex- 
perience ; or at all to intermeddle with the lessons 
and the laws of this great schoolmaster. He may 
work in secret, and yet perform all His pleasure — 
not bv the achievement of a miracle on Nature's 
open platform, but ^ by the touch of one or other of 
those master-springs which lie within the recesses 
of her inner laboratory. There, and at His place of 
supernal command by the fountain-heads of influ- 
ence, He *can turn whithersoever He will the 
machinery of our world, and without the possibility 
by human eye of detecting the least infringement 
on any of its processes — at once upholding the 
regularity of visible nature, and the supremacy of 
Nature's invisible God. 



AND UNIFORMITY OF NATURE. 



245 



But we are glad to make our escape, and now to 
make it conclusively, from the obscurer part of our 
reasoning on this subject — although, most assuredly, 
these are not the times for passing it wholly by ; or 
for withholding aught which can make in favour of 
the much derided cause of humble and earnest piety. 
But, instead of propounding our doctrine in the 
terms of a general argument, let us try the effect of 
a few special instances — by which, perhaps, we might 
more readily gain the consent of your understanding 
to our views. 

When the sigh of the midnight storm sends fearful 
agitation into a mother's heart as she thinks of her 
sailor boy now exposed to its fury on the waters of 
a distant ocean — these stern disciples of a hard and 
stern infidelity would, on this notion of a rigid and 
impracticable constancy in nature, forbid her pray- 
ers — holding them to be as impotent and vain, though 
addressed to the God who has all the elements in 
His hand, as if lifted up with senseless importunity to 
the raving elements themselves. Yet Nature would 
strongly prompt the aspiration ; and, if there be 
truth in our argument, there is nothing in the con- 
stitution of the universe to forbid its accomplishment. 
God might answer the prayer, not by unsettling the 
order of secondary causes — not by reversing any of 
the wonted successions that are known to take place 
in the ever-restless, ever-heaving atmosphere — not 
by sensible miracle among those nearer footsteps 
which the philosopher has traced ; but by the touch 
of an immediate hand among the deep recesses of 
materialism, which are beyond the ken of all his in- 
struments. It is thence that the Sovereign of 



216 



EFFICACY OF PRAYER 



Nature might bid the wild uproar of the elements 
into silence. It is there that the virtue comes out 
of Him, which passes like a winged messenger from 
the invisible to the visible ; and at the threshold of 
separation between these two regions, impresses the 
direction of the Almighty's will on the remotest 
cause which science can mount her way to. From 
this point in the series, the path of descent along 
the line of nearer and proximate causes may be 
rigidly invariable ; and in respect of the order, the 
precise undeviating order, wherewith they follow 
each other, all things continue as they were from 
the beginning of the creation. The heat, and the 
vapour, and the atmospherical precipitates, and the 
consequent moving forces by which either to raise a 
new tempest or to lay an old one — all these may 
proceed, and without one hair-breadth of deviation, 
according to the successions of our established philo- 
sophy — yet each be but the obedient messenger of 
that voice which gave forth its command at the 
fountain-head of the whole operation ; which com- 
missioned the vapours to ascend from the ends of 
the earth, and made lightnings for the rain, and 
brought the wind out of His treasuries. These are 
the palpable steps of the process ; but an unseen in- 
fluence behind the farthest limit of man's boasted 
discoveries may have set them agoing. And that 
influence may have been accorded to prayer — the 
power that moves Him, who moves the universe ; 
and w r ho, without violence to the known regularities 
of Nature, can either send forth the hurricane over 
the face of the deep, or recall it at His pleasure. 
Such is the joyful persuasion of faith, and proud 



AND UNIFORMITY OF NATURE. 



247 



philosophy cannot disprove it. A woman's feeble 
cry may have overruled the elemental war ; and 
hushed into silence this wild frenzy of the winds and 
the waves ; and evoked the gentler breezes from the 
cave of their slumbers ; and wafted the vessel of her 
dearest hopes, and which held the first and fondest 
of her earthly treasures, to its desired haven. 

And so of other prayers. It is not without instru- 
mentality, but by means of it, that they are answer- 
ed. The fulfilment is preceded by the accustomed 
series of causes and effects ; and preceded as far up- 
ward as the eye of man can trace the pedigree of 
sensible causation. Were it by a break anywhere in 
the traceable part of this series that the prayer was 
answered, then its fulfilment would be miraculous. 
But without a miracle the prayer is answered as 
effectually. Thus, for example, is met the cry of a 
people under famine for a speedy and plenteous 
harvest — not by the instant appearance of the ripen- 
ed grain at the bidding of a voice from heaven — not 
preternaturally cherished into maturity in the midst 
of storms ; but ushered onwards by a grateful suc- 
cession of shower and sunshine to a prosperous con- 
summation. An abundant harvest is granted to 
prayer — yet without violence either to the laws of 
the vegetable physiology, or to any of the known 
laws by which the alterations of the weather are de- 
termined. It must be acknowledged by every philo- 
sopher, how soon it is that we arrive in both depart- 
ments on the confines of deepest mystery : and let 
the constancy of patent and palpable Nature be as 
unaltered and unalterable as it may, Grod reserves 
to Himself the place of mastery and command, 



248 



EFFICACY OF PRAYER 



whether among the arcana of vegetation or the 
depths of meteorology. He may at once permit a 
most rigid uniformity to the visible workings of Na- 
ture's mechanism — while among its invisible, which 
are also its antecedent workings, He retains that 
station of pre-eminence and power, whence He brings 
all things to pass according to His pleasure. It is 
not by sending bread from the upper storehouses of 
the firmament that He answers this prayer. It is 
by sending rain and fruitful seasons. The inter- 
mediate machinery of Nature is not cast aside but 
pressed into the service ; and the prayer is answered 
by a secret touch from the finger of the Almighty, 
which sets all its parts and all its processes agoing. 
With the eye of sense man sees nothing but Nature 
revolving in her wonted cycles, and the months 
following each other in bright and beautiful succes- 
sion. In the eye of faith, ay, and of sound philo- 
sophy, every year of smiling plenty upon earth is a 
year crowned with the goodness of heaven. 

But to touch on that which more immediately 
concerns us, let us now instance prayer for health. 
We ask, if here philosophy has taken possession of 
the whole domain, and left no room for the preroga- 
tives and the exercise of faith — no hope for prayer ? 
Has the whole intermediate space between the 
first cause and the ultimate phenomena been so 
thoroughly explored, and the rigid uniformity of 
every footstep in the series been so fixed and ascer- 
tained by observation, as to preclude the rationality 
of prayer, and leave it without a meaning, because 
without the possibility of a fulfilment? Where is 
the physician or the physiologist who can tell that 



AND UNIFORMITY OF NATCKE. 



249 



he lias made the ascent from one prognostic or one 
predisposition to another — till he reached even to the 
primary fount ain-head of that influence which either 
medicates or distempers the human frame, and 
found throughout an adamantine chain of necessity, 
not to be broken by the sufferer's imploring cry? 
We ask the guardians of our health, how far upon 
the pathway of causation the discoveries of medical 
science have carried them ; and whether, above and 
beyond their farthest look into the mysteries of our 
framework, there are not higher mysteries, where a 
God may work in secret, and the hand of the Omni- 
potent be stretched forth to heal or to destroy? It 
is thence He may answer prayer. It is from this 
summit of ascendency that He may direct all the 
processes of the human constitution — yet without 
violating in any instance the uniformity of the few 
last and visible footsteps. Because science has 
traced, and so far determined this uniformity, she 
has not therefore exiled God from His own universe : 
She has not forced the Deity to quit His hold of its 
machinery, or to forego by one iota the most per- 
fect command of all its evolutions. His superintend- 
ence is as close and continuous and special, as if 
all things were done by the visible intervention of 
His hand. Without superstition, with the fullest 
recognition of science in all its prerogatives and 
all its glories— might we feel our immediate de- 
pendence on God; and, even in this our philosophic 
day, and notwithstanding all that philosophy has 
made known to us, might we still assert and vin- 
dicate the higher philosophy of prayer — asking of 
God, as patriarchs and holy men of old did before 



EFFICACY OF PRAYER 



us, for safety and sustenance and health and all 
things. 

And if ever in the dealings of God with the people 
of the earth, if ever science had less of the territory 
and faith had more of it, it is in that undisclosed 
mystery which still hangs over us ; which now for 
many months has shed baleful influences on your 
crowded city ; and whereof no man can tell whether 
in another day or another hour, it might not descend 
with fell swoop into the midst of his own family — 
entering there with rude unceremonious footstep, 
and hurrying to one of its rapid and inglorious 
funerals the dearest of the inmates. Never on any 
other theme did philosophy make more entire de- 
monstration of her own helplessness ; and perhaps 
at the very first footstep of the investigation, or on 
the question of the proximate cause, the contro- 
versy is loudest of all. But however justly of the 
proximate cause discovery may be made, or how r ever 
remotely among the anterior causes the investigation 
might be carried, never will proud philosophy be 
able to annul the intervention of a God, or purchase 
to herself the privilege of mocking at the poor man's 
prayer. Indeed, amid the exuberance and variety 
of speculation on this unsettled and unknown sub- 
ject, there was one remote cause assigned for this 
pestilent visitation, which, so far from shutting out, 
rather suggests, and that most forcibly, the interven- 
tion of a God immediately before it. " And it shall 
come to pass in that day, that the Lord shall hiss for 
the fly that is in the uttermost part of the rivers 
of Egypt, and for the bee that is in the land of 
Assyria : and they shall come, and shall rest all of 



AND UNIFORMITY OF NATURE. 



251 



tliem in the desolate valleys, and in the holes of the 
rocks, and upon all thorns, and upon all bushes/'* 
We hope to have made it plain to you, let this or any 
other cause be found the true one, that however 
high the path of discovery may have been traced, 
yet higher still there is place for the finger of a God 
above to regulate all the designs of a special provi- 
dence, and to move in conformity with all the ac- 
cepted prayers of His family below. But among the 
scoffers of our latter day, even in the absence or the 
want of all discovery, the finger of a God is dis- 
owned ; and it seems to mark how resolute and at 
the same time how hopeless is the infidelity of 
modern times, that just in proportion to our ignor- 
ance of all the secondary or the sensible causes, is 
our haughty refusal of any homage to the first cause. 
It is passing strange of this disease, that after hav- 
ing baffled every attempt to find out its dependence 
on aught that is on earth, the idea of its dependence 
on the will of Heaven should of all others have been 
laughed most impiously to scorn. The voice of de- 
rision and defiance was first heard in our high places ; 
and thence it passed, as if by infection, into general 
society. And so, many have disowned the power 
and the will of the Deity in this visitation. They 
most unphilosophically, we think, as well as im- 
piously, have spurned at prayer. 

But we cannot pass away from this part of our 
subject, without adverting to a recent event, the 
thought of which is at present irresistibly obtruded 
on us, and by which this parish and congregation 
but a few weeks ago have been deprived of one of 

* Isaiah vii. 18, 19. 



252 



EFFICACY OF PRAYER 



the most conspicuous of our office-bearers — one who 
constitutionally the kindest and most indulgent of 
men, was the most alive of all I ever knew to the 
wants and the miseries of our common nature ; and 
who finely alive to all the impulses and soft touches 
of humanity, laboured night and day in the vocation 
of doing good continually. But instead of saying 
that he laboured, I should say that he luxuriated in 
well-doing ; for never was a heart more attuned to 
ready and responsive agreement with the calls of 
benevolence than his, and sooner would I believe of 
Nature that she had receded from her constancy, 
than of him that e'er 

" He looked unmoved on misery's languid eye, 
Or heard her sinking voice without a sigh." 

Of all the recollections which the friends either of 
my youth or of my manhood have left behind them 
in this land of dying men, there is none more beauti- 
fully irradiated — whether I look back on the mild- 
ness of his Christian worth, or on those sensibilities 
of an open and generous and finely attempered spirit, 
which gives such a charm to human companionship. 
And as the second great law is like unto the first ; 
so that love of his which went forth so diffusively 
amongst his fellows upon earth, we humbly hope, 
was at once the indication and the consequent of a 
love that ascended with high and habitual aspiration 
to God in heaven. It was through a brief and tre- 
mendous agony that he was carried from the world 
of sense to the world of spirits ; and yet it is a 
happiness to be told that the faith and hope of the 
Gospel lighted up a halo over his expiring moments, 



AND UNIFORMITY OF NATURE. 



253 



and that, ere death had closed his eyes he, through 
nearly an hour of audible prayer gave his last testi- 
mony to the truth as it is in Jesus.* 

But to recall ourselves from this theme of sadness, 
Ave trust you will now understand of every event in 
Nature or history, that each in the order of causa- 
tion is preceded by a train which went before it, 
and that man's observations can extend more or less 
a certain way along this train, till they are lost in 
the undiscovered and at length undiscoverable re- 
cesses which are placed beyond the cognizance of the 
human faculties. Now it is because of the higher 
and unknown part which belongs to every such series, 
that we bid you respect the lessons of piety, for God 
hath not so constructed the universe as to remove 
it from the hold of His own special management 
and superintendence ; and therefore, not in one thing 
the Bible tells us, but in every thing, we should 
make our requests known unto God. But again, it 
is because of the lower and the known or ascertained 
and strictly uniform part which belongs to every 
series, that Ave bid you respect the lessons of experi- 
ence ; for God did not so conduct the affairs of His 
universe, as to thrust forth His invisible hand 
among its visible successions ; but while fie keeps a 
perpetual and ascendant hold among the springs of 
that machinery which is behind the curtain, He 
leaves untouched all those wonted regularities, which 
on the stage of observat ion are patent to human eyes. 

* This notice refers to John AVilson, Esq., silk merchant in Glas- 
gow, who was Kirk-Treasurer of St. John's, and to the deep regret 
of all who knew him, was carried off by cholera in the neighbour- 
hood of Glasgow. 



254 



EFFICACY OF PRAYER 



Now these are the respective domains of philosophy 
and faith, and this is the use to be made of them. 
Looking to the one, we learn the subordination of 
all Nature. Looking to the other, we learn the con- 
stancy of visible nature. These great truths har- 
monize ; and between the lessons which they give, 
there is the fullest harmony. He who is enlightened 
and acts upon both is at one and the same time a 
man of prudence and a man of prayer ; who never 
loses his confidence in God, yet, as awake to the 
manifestations of experience as if they were the 
manifestations of the divine will, never counts upon a 
miracle. He holds perpetual converse with heaven ; 
yet shapes his earthly conduct by his earthly cir- 
cumstances. In his habits of diligence he proceeds 
on the uniformity of visible nature, and he does 
accordingly. In his habits of devotion, he knows 
that there is a visible pow T er above which subordi- 
nates all Nature, and he prays accordingly. He is 
neither the mystic who will not act, nor is he the 
infidel who will not pray. He knows how to combine 
both, or how to combine wisdom with piety — that 
rare and beauteous combination unknown to the 
world at large, yet realized by many a cottage pa- 
triarch, who, without attempting, without being 
capable in fact of any profound or philosophical 
adjustment between them, but on his simple under- 
standing alone of Scripture lessons and Scripture ex- 
amples, unites the most strenuous diligence in the 
use of means, with the strictest dependence upon 
God. Without the combination of these two, there 
has been nothing great, nothing effective in the 
history of the church ; and, on the other hand, we 



AND UNIFORMITY OF NATURE. 



255 



find that all the most illustrious, whether in philan- 
thropy or in Christian patriotism, from the apostle 
Paul to the highest names in the descending history 
of the world, as Augustine and Luther and Knox 
and Howard, that, superadding the wisdom of ex- 
perience to a sense of deepest piety, they were at 
once men of performance and men of prayer. 

But let us look for a moment to the highest ex- 
ample of all, even that of our Saviour when on 
earth ; for in the history of His temptation will the 
eye of the diligent observer recognise an application 
and a moral, which serve, we think very finely, to 
illustrate our whole argument. 

The first proposal of the adversary was, that, be- 
cause an hungered by the abstinence of forty days 
and forty nights in the wilderness, He should turn 
stones into bread ; and the reply of our Saviour that 
" Man liveth not by bread alone, but by every word 
which cometh out of the mouth of God/' bespoke His 
confidence in that Supreme Power which overrules 
all Nature. Now, observe how T this is followed up by 
the tempter : — Since such His confidence, I may per- 
haps prevail upon Him to cast Himself from the 
pinnacle of the temple, employing the very argument 
He just has used, even the overruling power of that 
God who can bear Him up by the intervention of 
angels, lest He dash His foot against a stone. The re- 
ply > — "Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God/' tells 
us, that the same Being who overrules all Nature, 
never interferes but for some worthy and great pur- 
pose to trrwart the established successions of visible 
nature ; and that it is wrong, it is wanton, in any 
of His creatures so to act, as if he counted upon 



256 EFFICACY OF PRAYER 

such an interference. It is a noble lesson for us 
never to traverse or neglect the means which expe- 
rience hath told us are effectual for good ; and never 
to brave, but at the call of imperious duty, the ex- 
posures which the same experience has told us, on 
our knowledge or recollection of Nature's established 
processes, are followed up by evil. Our Saviour 
would not in defiance to the law of gravitation, 
east Himself off from that place of security which 
upheld Him against its power. And neither should 
we ever, though in defiance but to the probable law 
of contagion, or by what (to borrow a usual phrase) 
might well be termed a tempting of Providence, re- 
fuse those places or cast away those measures of secu- 
rity, that are found to protect us against the virulence 
of this destroyer. In a word, between the wisdom of 
piety and the wisdom of experience there is most 
profound harmony — unknown to the infidel, and so 
he hath cast off prayer ; unknown to the fanatic, and 
so he hath cast prudence away from him. 

And we appeal to you, my brethren, if there be not 
much in the state and recent history of our nation 
to confirm these views. We rejoiced in the appoint- 
ment several months ago of a national fast, and 
that notwithstanding the contempt and annoyance 
of the many infidel manifestations to which the ap- 
pointment had been exposed — hoping, as we then 
did, that it would meet with a duteous and a gene- 
ral response from the people of the land ; and per- 
ceiving afterwards, in our limited sphere, the obvious 
solemnity, and we trust in a goodly number of in- 
stances, the deep and heart-felt sacredness of its 
observation among our families. It is well that 



AND UNIFORMITY OF NATURE. 



257 



there should be a public and a prayerful recognition 
of God in the midst of us ; and we have failed in 
our argument, we have failed, whether from the 
obscurity of its illustrations or the obscurity of its 
terms, in obtaining for it the sympathy of your 
understandings — if you perceive not, that, in the 
distinct relation of cause and effect, there is a real 
substantive connexion between the supplications 
which ascend for health and safety from the midst 
of a land, and the actual warding off of disease and 
death from its habitations. But in fullest harmony 
with this it is also well, I would go farther and say 
there is no infringement upon deepest piety in 
pronouncing it indispensable — that while we in- 
voke the Heavenly Agent who sitteth above for 
every effectual blessing, all the earthly means and 
earthly instruments should be in complete and 
orderly preparation. We are aware that in many 
places and on many occasions, these have been re- 
belled against.* And it but enhances the lesson, 
beside carrying a most impressive rebuke, both to the 
fanaticism of an ill-understood Christianity, and to 
the ignorant frenzy of an ill-educated, and, in re- 
spect to the woful deficiency both of churches and 

* In Edinburgh, the metropolis of medical science, a vigorous 
system of expedients was instituted ; and nothing could exceed the 
promptitude and the watchfulness and the activity, at a moment's 
call, wherewith the disease was met and repressed at every point 
of its outbreakings. And we cannot imagine a more striking 
demonstration for the importance of human agency, diligently 
operating on all the resources which Nature and experience have 
placed within our reach, than is furnished by a comparison between 
the perfection of our city arrangements, and the fewness of our 
city deaths. 

7 B 



« 



253 



EFFICACY OF PRAYER 



schools, we would say a neglected population — that 
just in those places where the offered help of the 
physician was most strenuously and most ungrate- 
fully resisted, and at times indeed by violence over- 
borne, that there it was where the disease reas- 
serted its power, and as if with the hand of an 
avenger, shook menace and terror among the fami- 
lies. As if the same God who bids us in His word 
make request unto Him in all things, would further- 
more tell us by His Providence, that, in no one 
thing will He permit a heedless invasion on the 
regularities of that course which He Himself has 
established ; that with His own hand He ordained 
the footsteps of Nature, and He will chastise the 
presumption of those wdio shall think to contravene 
the ordinance ; that experience is the schoolmaster 
authorized by Him for the government and guidance 
of His family on earth, and that He will resent the 
outrage done to her authority whenever her lessons 
or her laws are wantonly violated. 

In conclusion, let us observe that, on the one 
hand, we shall be glad if aught that has been said 
will help to conciliate our mere religionists to the 
lessons of experience and of sound philosophy ; and, 
in opposition to those senseless prejudices, by which 
they have often brought the most unmerited derision 
and discredit on their own cause, we would remind 
them that it is not all philosophy which Scripture 
denounces, but only vain philosophy — it is not all 
science which it deprecates, but only the science 
falsely so called. On the other hand, we should 
rejoice in witnessing the mere philosopher or man 
of secular and experimental wisdom, more con- 



AND UNIFORMITY OF NATUKE. 



259 



ciliated than lie is to the lessons of Religion, and to 
that humble faith which is the great and actuating 
spirit of its observations and its pieties and its 
prayers. We have heard that the study of Natural 
Science disposes to Infidelity. But we feel per- 
suaded that this is a danger only associated with a 
slight and partial, never with a deep and adequate 
and comprehensive view of its principles. It is very 
possible that the conjunction between science and 
scepticism may at present be more frequently rea- 
lized than in former days ; but this is only be- 
cause, in spite of all that is alleged about this our 
more enlightened day and more enlightened public, 
our science is neither so deeply founded nor of such 
firm and thorough staple as it wont to be. We 
have lost in depth what w r e have gained in diffusion 
—having neither the massive erudition, nor the 
gigantic scholarship, nor the profound and well- 
laid philosophy of a period that has now gone by ; 
and it is to this that infidelity stands indebted for 
her triumphs among the scoffers and the super- 
ficialists of a half-learned generation. 



260 



TRANSITOKINESS OF VISIBLE THINGS. 



DISCOURSE III. 

THE TRANSITORY NATURE OF VISIBLE THINGS, 



" The things which are seen are temporal." — 2 Con. iv. 18. 

The assertion that the things which are seen are 
temporal, holds true in the absolute and universal 
sense of it. They had a beginning, and they will 
have an end. Should we go upward through the 
stream of ages that are past, we come to a time 
when they were not. Should we go onward through 
the stream of ages that are before us, we come to 
a time when they will be no more. It is indeed a 
most mysterious flight which the imagination ven- 
tures upon, when it goes back to the eternity that 
is behind us — when it mounts its ascending way 
through the millions and the millions of years that 
are already gone through, and stop where it may, 
it finds the line of its march always lengthening 
beyond it, and losing itself in the obscurity of as 
far removed a distance as ever. It soon reaches 
the commencement of visible things, or that point 
in its progress when God made the heavens and 
the earth. They had a beginning, but God had 
none ; and what a wonderful field for the fancy to 
expatiate on, when we get above the era of created 
worlds, and think of that period when, in respect 
of all that is visible, the immensity around us was 
one vast and unpeopled solitude. But God was 



TRAXSITORINESS OF VISIBLE THINGS. 261 

there, in His dwelling-place, for it is said of Him, 
that He inhabits eternity ; and the Son of God was 
there, for we read of the glory which He had with 
the Father before the world was. The mind cannot 
sustain itself under the burden of these lofty contem- 
plations. It cannot lift the curtain which shrouds 
the past eternity of God. But it is good for the 
soul to be humbled under a sense of its incapacity. 
It is good to realize the impression which too often 
abandons us, that He made us, and not we ourselves. 
It is good to feel how all that is temporal lies in 
passive and prostrate subordination before the will 
of the uncreated God. It is good to know how 
little a portion it is that we see of Him and of His 
mysterious ways. It is good to lie at the feet of 
His awful and unknown majesty — and while secret 
things belong to Him, it is good to bring with us 
all the helplessness and docility of children to those 
revealed lessons which belong to us and to our 
children. 

But this is not the sense in which the temporal 
nature of visible things is taken up by the Apostle. 
It is not that there is a time past in which they did 
not exist — but that there is a time to come in which 
they will exist no more. He calls them temporal, 
because the time and the duration of their existence 
will have an end. His eye is full upon futurity. 
It is the passing away of visible things in the time 
that is to come, and the ever during nature of invisi- 
ble things through the eternity that is to come, 
which the Apostle is contemplating. Now, on this 
one point we say nothing about the positive anni- 
hilation of the matter of visible things. There is 



262 



TRAXSTTORINESS OF VISIBLE THINGS. 



reason for believing, that some of the matter of our 
present bodies may exist in those more glorified and 
transformed bodies which we are afterwards to 
occupy. And for any thing we know, the matter 
of the present world and of the present system 
may exist in those new heavens and that new earth 
wherein dwelleth righteousness. There may be a 
transfiguration of matter without a destruction of it 
— and therefore it is, that when we assert with the 
Apostle in the text how things seen are temporal, 
we shall not say more than that the substance of 
these things, if not consigned back again to the 
nothing from which they had emerged, will be 
employed in the formation of other things totally 
different — that the change will be so great as that 
all old things may be said to have passed away, and 
all things to become new — that after the wreck of 
the last conflagration, the desolated scene will be 
repeopled with other objects ; the righteous will live 
in another world, and the eye of the glorified body 
will open on another field of contemplation from 
that which is now visible around us. 

Now, in this sense of the word temporal, the asser- 
tion of my text may be carried round to all that is 
visible. Even those objects which men are most apt 
to count upon as unperishable, because, without any 
sensible decay they have stood the lapse of many 
ages, will not weather the lapse of eternity. This 
earth will be burnt up. The light of yonder sun will 
be extinguished. These stars will cease from their 
twinkling. The heavens will pass away as a scroll 
— and as to those solid and enormous masses which, 
like the firm world we tread upon, roll in mighty 



TKANSIT0R1NESS OF VISIBLE THINGS. 263 

circuit through the immensity around us, it seems 
the solemn language of revelation of one and all of 
them, that from the face of Him who sitteth on the 
throne, the earth and the heavens will fly away, and 
there will be found no place for them. 

Even apart from the Bible, the eye of observation 
can witness in some of the hardest and firmest ma- 
terials of the present system, the evidence of its 
approaching dissolution. What more striking, for 
example, than the natural changes which take place 
on the surface of the world, and which prove that 
the strongest of Nature's elements must, at last, 
yield to the operation of time and of decay— that 
yonder towering mountain, though propped by the 
rocky battlements which surround it, must at last 
sink under the power of corruption — that every year 
brings it nearer to its end — that at this moment it 
is wasting silently away, and letting itself down from 
the lofty eminence which it now occupies — that the 
torrent which falls from its side never ceases to con- 
sume its substance, and to carry it off in the form of 
sediment to the ocean — that the frost which assails 
it in winter loosens the solid rock, detaches it in 
pieces from the main precipice, and makes it fall in 
fragments to its base — that the power of the weather 
scales off the most flinty materials, and that the wind 
of heaven scatters them in dust over the surrounding 
country — that even though not anticipated by the 
sudden and awful convulsions of the day of God's 
wrath, Nature contains within itself the rudiments of 
decay — that every hill must be levelled with the 
plains, and every plain be swept away by the con- 
stant operation of the rivers which run through it — 



264 TL^NSITORINESS OF VISIBLE THINGS. 

and that, unless renewed by the hand of the 
Almighty, the earth on which we are now treading 
must disappear in the mighty roll of ages and of cen- 
turies. We cannot take our flight to other worlds, 
or have a near view of the changes to which they 
are liable ; but surely if this world, which, with its 
mighty apparatus of continents and islands, looks so 
healthful and so firm after the wear of many cen- 
turies, is posting visibly to its end, we may be pre- 
pared to believe that the principles of destruction 
are also at work in other provinces of the visible 
creation — and that though of old God laid the foun- 
dation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of 
his hands, yet they shall perish ; yea, all of them 
shall wax old like a garment, and as a vesture shall 
He change them, and they shall be changed. 

We should be out of place in all this style of ob- 
servation, did we not follow it up with the sentiment 
of the Psalmist, " These shall perish, but thou shalt 
endure ; for thou art the same, and thy years have 
no end/' What a lofty conception does it give us of 
the majesty of God, when we think how He sits 
above and presides in high authority over this 
mighty series of changes — when after sinking under 
our attempts to trace Him through the eternity that 
is behind, we look on the present system of things, 
and are taught to believe that it is but a single step 
in the march of His grand administrations through 
the eternity that is before us — when we think of 
this goodly universe, summoned into being to serve 
some temporary evolution of His great and mysteri- 
ous plan — when we think of the time when it shall 
be broken up, and out of its disordered fragments. 



TEANSITOEINESS OF VISIBLE THINGS. 



265 



other scenes and other systems shall emerge- — surely v 
when fatigued with the vastness of these contempla- 
tions, it well becomes us to do the homage of our re- 
verence and wonder to the one Spirit which con- 
ceives and animates the whole, and to the one noble 
design which runs through all its fluctuations. 

But there is another way in which the objects that 
are seen are temporal. The object may not merely 
be removed from us, but we may be removed from 
the object. The disappearance of this earth and of 
these heavens from us, we look upon through the 
dimness of a far-placed futurity. It is an event y 
therefore, which may regale our imagination ; which 
may lift our mind by its sublimity ; which may dis- 
engage us in the calm hour of meditation from the 
littleness of life and of its cares ; and which may 
even throw a clearness and a solemnity over our in- 
tercourse with God. But such an event as this does 
not come home upon our hearts with the urgency of 
a personal interest. It does not carry along with it 
the excitement which lies in the nearness of an im- 
mediate concern. It does not fall with such vivacity 
upon our conceptions, as practically to tell on our 
pursuits or any of our purposes. It may elevate and 
solemnize us, but this effect is perfectly consistent 
with its having as little influence on the walk of the 
living, and the moving, and the acting man, as a 
dream of poetry. The preacher may think that he 
has done great things with his eloquence — and the 
hearers may think that great things have been done 
upon them — for they felt a fine glow of emotion, 
when they heard of God sitting in the majesty of 
His high counsels, over the progress and the destiny 



2<>6 TRANSITORINESS OF VISIBLE THINGS. 

of created things. But the truth is, that all this 
kindling of devotion which is felt upon the contem- 
plation of His greatness, may exist in the same 
bosom with an utter distaste for the holiness of His 
character ; with an entire alienation of the heart and 
of the habits from the obedience of His law ; and 
above all, with a most nauseous and invincible con- 
tempt for the spiritualities of that revelation, in 
which He has actually made known His will and His 
ways to us. The devotion of mere taste is one thing 
— the devotion of principle is another. And as 
surely as a man may weep over the elegant sufferings 
of poetry, yet add to the real sufferings of life by 
peevishness in his family, and insolence among his 
neighbours — so surely may a man be wakened to 
rapture by the magnificence of God, while his life is 
deformed by its rebellions, and his heart rankles with 
all the foulness of idolatry against Him. 

Well, then, let us try the other way of bringing 
the temporal Nature of visible things to bear upon 
your interests. It is true that this earth and these 
heavens will at length disappear ; but they may 
outlive our posterity for many generations. How- 
ever, if they disappear not from us, we most certainly 
shall disappear from them. They will soon cease 
to be any thing to you — and though the splendour 
and variety of all that is visible around us, should 
last for thousands of centuries, your eyes will soon 
be closed upon them. The time is coming when 
this goodly scene shall reach its positive consum- 
mation. But, in all likelihood, the time is coming 
much sooner, when you shall resign the breath of 
your nostrils, and bid a final adieu to every thing 



TRANSITORINESS OF VISIBLE THINGS. 267 

around you. Let this earth and these heavens 
be as enduring as they may, to you they are fugi- 
tive as vanity. Time with its mighty strides, will 
soon reach a future generation, and leave the pre- 
sent in death and in forgetfulness behind it. The 
grave will close upon every one of you, and that is 
the dark and the silent cavern where no voice is 
heard, and the light of the sun never enters. 

But more than this. Though we live too short 
a time to see the great changes which are carrying 
on in the universe, we live long enough to see many 
of its changes — and such changes too as are best 
fitted to warn and to teach us ; even the changes 
which take place in society, made up of human 
beings as frail and as fugitive as ourselves. Death 
moves us away from many of those objects which 
are seen and temporal — but we live long enough 
to see many of these objects moved away from us 
— to see acquaintances falling every year — to see 
families broken up by the rough and unsparing hand 
of death — to see houses and neighbourhoods shifting 
their inhabitants — to see a new race and a new 
generation — and, whether in church or in market, 
to see unceasing changes in the faces of the people 
who repair to them. We know well, that there is 
a poetic melancholy inspired by such a picture as 
this which is altogether unfruitful — and that totally 
apart from religion, a man may give way to the 
luxury of tears, when he thinks how friends drop 
away from him — how every year brings along with 
it some sad addition to the registers of death — 
how the kind and hospitable mansion is left with- 
out a tenant — and how, when you knock at a neigh- 



263 



TRANSITORINESS OF VISIBLE THINGS. 



hour's door, you find that he who welcomed you 
and made you happy, is no longer there. that 
we could impress by all this a salutary direction 
on the fears and on the consciences of individuals 
— that we could give them a living impression of 
that coming day when they shall severally share in 
the general wreck of the species — when each of you 
shall be one of the many whom the men of the next 
generation may remember to have lived in yonder 
street, or laboured in yonder manufactory — when 
they shall speak of you just as you speak of the 
men of the former generation — who when they died 
had a few tears dropped over their memory, and for 
a few years will still continue to be talked of. Oh 
could we succeed in giving you a real and living im- 
pression of all this ; and then may we hope to carry 
the lesson of John the Baptist with energy to your 
fears, " Flee from the coming wrath/' But there is 
something so very deceiving in the progress of time. 
Its progress is so gradual. To-day is so like yester- 
day, that we are not sensible of its departure. We 
should make head against this delusion. We should 
turn to personal account every example of change 
or of mortality. When the clock strikes, it should 
remind you of the dying hour. When you hear the 
sound of the funeral bell, you should think that in 
a little time it will perform for you the same office. 
When you wake in the morning, you should think 
that there has been the addition of another day to 
the life that is past, and the subtraction of another 
day from the remainder of your journey. When the 
shades of the evening fall around you, you should 
think of the steady and invariable progress of time 



TRANSITORINESS OF VISIBLE THING3. 2G9 

— how the sun moves and moves till it will see you 
out — and how it will continue to move after you 
die, and see out your children's children to the latest 
generations. Every thing around us should impress 
the mutability of human affairs. An acquaintance 
dies — you will soon follow him. A family moves 
from the neighbourhood — learn that the works of 
man are given to change. New families succeed — 
sit loose to the world, and withdraw your affections 
from its unstable and fluctuating interests. Time 
is rapid, though we observe not its rapidity. The 
days that are past appear like the twinkling of a 
vision. The days that are to come will soon have a 
period, and will appear to have performed their 
course with equal rapidity. We talk of our fathers 
and our grandfathers, who figured their day in the 
theatre of the world. In a little time we will be 
the ancestors of a future age. Posterity will talk of 
us as of the men that are gone — and our remem- 
brance will soon depart from the face of the country. 
When we attend the burial of an acquaintance, we 
see the bones of the men of other times — in a few 
years our bodies will be mangled by the power of 
corruption, and be thrown up in loose and scattered 
fragments among the earth of the newly made grave. 
When we wander among the tombstones of the 
church-yard, we can scarcely follow the mutilated 
letters that compose the simple story of the inhabi- 
tant below. In a little time, and the tomb that 
covers us will moulder by the power of the seasons 
— and the letters will be eaten away — and the story 
that was to perpetuate our remembrance, will elude 
the gaze of some future inquirer. 



270 TRANSITOR1NESS OF VISIBLE THINGS . 

We know that time is short, but none of us knows 
how short. We know that it will not go beyond a 
certain limit of years ; but none of us knows how 
small the number of years, or months, or days may 
be. For death is at work upon all ages. The fever 
of a few days may hurry the likeliest of us all from 
this land of mortality. The cold of a few weeks 
may settle into some lingering but irrecoverable dis- 
ease. In one instant the blood of him who has the 
promise of many years may cease its circulation. 
Accident may assail us. A slight fall may precipi- 
tate us into eternity. An exposure to rain may lay 
us on the bed of our last sickness, from which we are 
never more to rise. A little spark may kindle the 
midnight conflagration, which lays a house and its 
inhabitants in ashes. A stroke of lightning may 
arrest the current of life in a twinkling. A gust of 
wind may overturn the vessel, and lay the unwary 
passenger in a watery grave. A thousand dangers 
beset us on the slippery path of this world; no 
age is exempted from them — and from the infant 
that hangs on its mother s bosom, to the old man 
who sinks under the decrepitude of years, we see 
death in all its woful and affecting varieties. 

You may think it strange — but even still we fear 
we may have done little in the way of sending a 
fruitful impression into your consciences. We are too 
well aware of the distinction between seriousness 
of feeling and seriousness of principle, to think that 
upon the strength of any such moving representation 
as we are now indulging in, we shall be able to 
dissipate that confounded spell which chains you 
to the world, to reclaim your wandering affections, 



TRANSITORINESS OF VISIBLE THINGS. 



271 



or to send you back to your week-day business more 
pure and more heavenly. But sure we are you 
ought to be convinced, that all which binds you so 
cleavingly to the dust is infatuation and vanity ; 
that there is something most lamentably wrong in 
your being carried away by the delusions of time — 
and this is a conviction which should make you feel 
restless and dissatisfied. We are well aware that it is 
not human eloquence or human illustration that can 
accomplish a victory over the obstinate principles 
of human corruption ; and therefore it is that we feel 
as if we did not advance aright through a single 
step of a sermon, unless we look for the influences 
of that mighty Spirit who alone is able to enlighten 
and arrest you — and may employ even so humble an 
instrument as the voice of a fellow-mortal to send 
into your heart the inspiration of understanding. 

We now shortly insist on the truth, that the things 
which are not seen are eternal. No man hath seen 
God at any time, and He is eternal. It is said of 
Christ, — " Whom having not seen, we love, and He is 
the same to-day, yesterday, and for ever/' It is said 
of the Spirit, that, like the wind of heaven, He 
eludes the observation, and no man can tell of him 
whence He cometh, or whither He goeth — and He is 
called the Eternal Spirit, through whom the Son 
offered Himself up without spot unto God. We are 
quite aware that the idea suggested by the eternal 
things which are spoken of in our text, is heaven, 
with all its circumstances of splendour and enjoyment. 
This is an object which, even on the principles of 
taste, we take a delight in contemplating : and it is 
also an object set before us in the Scriptures, though 



272 TRANSITORINESS OF VISIBLE THINGS. 

with a very sparing and reserved hand. All the de- 
scriptions we have of heaven there are general, very 
general. We read of the beauty of the heavenly 
crown, of the unfading nature of the heavenly in- 
heritance, of the splendour of the heavenly city — and 
these have been seized upon by men of imagination, 
who, in the construction of their fancied paradise, 
have embellished it with every image of peace, and 
bliss, and loveliness ; and, at all events, have thrown 
over it that most kindling of all conceptions, the 
magnificence of eternity. Now, such a picture as 
this has the certain effect of ministering delight to 
every glowing and susceptible imagination. And 
here lies the deep-laid delusion which we have oc- 
casionally hinted at. A man listens, in the first in- 
stance, to a pathetic and highly wrought narrative on 
the vanities of time — and it touches him even to the 
tenderness of tears. He looks, in the second instance, 
to the fascinating perspective of another scene, rising 
in all the glories of immortality from the dark ruins 
of the tomb, and he feels within him all those ravish- 
ments of fancy, which any vision of united grandeur 
and loveliness would inspire. Take these two to- 
gether, and you have a man weeping over the tran- 
sient vanities of an ever-shifting world, and mixing 
with all this softness, an elevation of thought and of 
prospect, as he looks through the vista of a futurity, 
losing itself in the mighty range of thousands and 
thousands of centuries. And at this point the de- 
lusion comes in, that here is a man who is all that 
religion would have him to be — a man weaned from 
the littleness of the paltry scene that is around him 
— soaring high above all the evanescence of things 



TRANS1T0RINESS OF VISIBLE THINGS. 273 

present and things sensible — and transferring every 
affection of his soul to the durabilities of a pure and 
immortal region. It were better if this high state 
of occasional impression on the matters of time and 
of eternity, had only the effect of imposing the false- 
hood on others, that the man who was so touched 
and so transported, had on that single account the 
temper of a candidate for heaven. But the falsehood 
takes possession of his own heart. The man is 
pleased with his emotions and his tears — and the in- 
terpretation he puts upon them is, that they come 
out of the fulness of a heart all alive to religion, and 
sensibly affected with its charms, and its seriousness, 
and its principle. Now, we venture to say, that 
there may be much of all this kind of enthusiasm 
with the very man who is not moving a single step 
towards that blessed eternity over which his fancy 
delights to expatiate. The moving representation of 
the preacher may be listened to as a pleasant song 
— and the entertained hearer return to all the inve- 
terate habits of one of the children of this world. It 
is this which makes us fear that a power of deceit- 
fulness may accompany the eloquence of the pulpit 
— that the wisdom of words may defeat the great 
object of a practical work upon the conscience — that 
a something short of a real business change in the 
heart and in the principles of acting, may satisfy 
the man who listens, and admires, and resigns his 
every feeling to the magic of an impressive descrip- 
tion — that, strangely compounded beings as we are, 
broken loose from God, and proving it by the habi- 
tual voidness of our hearts to a sense of His authority 
and of His will ; that blind to the realities of another 
7 s 



274 



TKANSITORINESS OF VISIBLE THINGS. 



world, and slaves to the wretched infatuation which 
makes us cleave with the full bent of our affections 
to the one by which we are visibly and immediately 
surrounded ; that utterly unable, by nature, to live 
above the present scene, while its cares and its in- 
terests are plying us every hour with their urgency ; 
that the prey of evil passions which darken and dis- 
tract the inner man, and throw us at a wider distance 
from the holy Being who forbids the indulgence of 
them ; and yet with all this weight of corruption 
about us, having a mind that can seize the vastness 
of some great conception, and can therefore rejoice 
in the expanding loftiness of its own thoughts, as it 
dwells on the wonders of eternity ; and having hearts 
that can move to the impulse of a tender consider- 
ation, and can, therefore, sadden into melancholy at 
the dark picture of death, and its unrelenting cruel- 
ties ; and having fancies that can brighten to the 
cheerful colouring of some pleasing and hopeful re- 
presentation, and can, therefore, be soothed and ani- 
mated when some sketch is laid before it of a pious 
family emerging from a common sepulchre, and on 
the morning of their joyful resurrection, forgetting 
all the sorrows and separations of the dark world 
that has now rolled over them.— Oh, my brethren, we 
fear it, we greatly fear it, that while busied with 
topics such as these, many a hearer may weep or be 
elevated, or take pleasure in the touching imagery 
that is made to play around him, while the dust of 
this perishable earth is all that his soul cleaves to — 
and its cheating vanities are all that his heart cares 
for, or his footsteps follow after. 

The thing is not merely possible — but we see in 



tkansitorinp:ss of visible things. 275 

it a stamp of likelihood to all that experience tells 
us of the nature or the habitudes of man. Is there 
no such thing as his having a taste for the beauties 
of landscape, and at ' the same time turning with 
disgust from what he calls the methodism of peculiar 
Christianity ? Might not he be an admirer of poetry, 
and at the same time nauseate with his whole 
heart the doctrine and the language of the JSew Tes- 
tament ? Might not he have a fancy that can be re- 
galed by some fair and w T ell-formed vision of immor- 
tality, and at the same time have no practical 
hardihood whatever for the exercise of labouring in 
the prescribed way after the meat that endureth ? 
Surely, surely, this is all very possible — and it is just 
as possible, and many we believe to be the instances 
we have of it in real life, when an eloquent descrip- 
tion of heaven is exquisitely felt, and wakens in the 
bosom the raptures of the sincerest admiration, 
among those who feel an utter repugnancy to the 
heaven of the Bible — and are not moving a single 
inch through the narrowness of the path which leads 
to it. 



Idiggoq ! 



27(] 



NEW HEAVENS AND NEW EARTH. 



DISCOURSE IV. 

ON THE NEW HEAVENS AND THE NEW EARTH. 



Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens 
arid a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness." — 2 Peter iii. 

There is a limit to the revelations of the Bible 
about futurity, and it were a mental or spiritual 
trespass to go beyond it. The reserve which it 
maintains in its informations, we also ought to main- 
tain in our inquiries — satisfied to know little on 
every subject, where it has communicated little, and 
feeling our way into regions which are at present 
unseen, no farther than the light of Scripture will 
carry us. 

But while we attempt not to be "wise above 
that which is written/' we should attempt, and that 
most studiously, to be wise up to that which is 
written. The disclosures are very few and very 
partial which are given to us of that bright and 
beautiful economy which is to survive the ruins of 
our present one. But still there are such disclo- 
sures — and on the principle of the things that are 
revealed belonging unto us, we have a right to walk 
up and down for the purpose of observation over 
the whole actual extent of them. What is made 
known of the details of immortality, is but small in 



NEW HEAVENS AND NEW EARTH. 



277 



the amount, nor are we furnished with the materials 
of any thing like a graphical or picturesque exhi- 
bition of its abodes of blessedness. But still some- 
what is made known, and which, too, may be ad- 
dressed to a higher principle than curiosity, being 
like every other Scripture, " profitable both for 
doctrine and for instruction in righteousness/' 

In the text before us, there are two leading points 
of information which we should like successively 
to remark upon. The first is, that in the new 
economy which is to be reared for the accommoda- 
tion of the blessed, there will be materialism, not 
merely new heavens, but also a new earth. The 
second is, that as distinguished from the present, 
which is an abode of rebellion, it will be an abode 
of righteousness. 

I. W e know historically that earth, that a solid 
material earth, may form the dwelling of sinless 
creatures in full converse and friendship with the 
Being who made them — that instead of a place of 
exile for outcasts, it may have a broad avenue 
of communication with the spiritual world for the 
descent of ethereal beings from on high — that like 
the member of an extended family, it may share in 
the regard and attention of the other members, and 
along with them be gladdened by the presence of 
Him who is the Father of them all. To inquire how 
this can be, were to attempt a wisdom beyond 
Scripture : but to assert that this has been, and 
therefore may be, is to keep most strictly and mo- 
destly within the limits of the record. For we there 
read, that God framed an apparatus of materialism, 
which, on His own surveying, He pronounced to bo 



27$ 



NEW HEAVENS AND NEW EARTH. 



all very good, and the leading features of wliicli 
may still be recognised among the things and the 
substances that are around us — and that He created 
man with the bodily organs and senses which we 
now wear — and placed him under the very canopy 
that is over our heads — and spread around him a 
scenery, perhaps lovelier in its tints, and more 
smiling and serene in the whole aspect of it, but 
certainly made up in the main of the same objects 
that still compose the prospect of our visible con- 
templations — and there, working with his hands in 
a garden, and with trees on every side of him, and 
even with animals sporting at his feet, was this in- 
habitant of earth, in the midst of all those earthly 
and familiar accompaniments, in full possession of 
the best immunities of a citizen of heaven — sharing 
in the delight of angels, and while he gazed on the 
very beauties which we ourselves gaze upon, rejoic- 
incc in them most as the tokens of a present and 
presiding Deity. It were venturing on the region 
of conjecture to affirm, whether, if Adam had not 
fallen, the earth that we now tread upon, would 
have been the everlasting abode of him and his pos- 
terity. But certain it is, that man, at the first, had 
for his place this world, and at the same time, for 
his privilege, an unclouded fellowship with God, 
and for his prospect, an immortality which death 
was neither to intercept nor put an end to. He was 
terrestrial in respect of condition, and yet celestial 
in respect both of character and enjoyment. His 
eye looked outwardly on a landscape of earth, while 
his heart breathed upwardly in the love of heaven. 
And though he-trode the solid platform of our world, 



NEW HEAVENS AND NEW EAUTH. 



279 



and was compassed about with its horizon — still 
was he within the circle of God's favoured creation, 
and took his place among the freemen and the deni- 
zens of the great spiritual commonwealth. 

This may serve to rectify an imagination, of which 
we think that all must be conscious — as if the gross- 
ness of materialism was only for those who had de- 
generated into the grossness of sin ; and that, when 
a spiritualizing process had purged away all our 
corruption, then by the stepping-stones of a death 
and a resurrection, we should be borne away to 
some ethereal region, where sense, and body, and all 
in the shape either of audible sound or of tangible 
substance were unknown. And hence that strange- 
ness of impression which is felt by you, should the 
supposition be offered, that in the place of eternal 
blessedness, there will be ground to walk upon ; or 
scenes of luxuriance to delight the corporeal senses ; 
or the kindly intercourse of friends talking famili- 
arly and by articulate converse together ; or, in short, 
any thing that has the least resemblance to a local 
territory, filled with various accommodations, and 
peopled over its whole extent by creatures formed 
like ourselves — having bodies such as we now wear, 
and faculties of perception, and thought, and mutual 
communication, such as we now exercise. The 
common imagination that we have of paradise on 
the other side of death, is, that of a lofty aerial 
region, where the inmates float in ether, or are 
mysteriously suspended upon nothing — where all 
the warm and sensible accompaniments which give 
such an expression of strength, and life, and colour- 
ing to our present habitation, are attenuated into a 



280 



NEW HEAVENS AND NEW EARTH. 



sort of spiritual element, that is meagre, and imper- 
ceptible, and utterly uninviting to the eye of mortals 
here below — where every vestige of materialism is 
done away, and nothing left but certain unearthly 
scenes that have no power of allurement, and 
certain unearthly ecstasies, with which it is felt im- 
possible to sympathize. The holders of this ima- 
gination forget all the while, that really there is no 
essential connexion between materialism and sin- 
that the world which we now inhabit had all the 
amplitude and solidity of its present materialism 
before sin entered into it — that God so far on that 
account from .looking slightly upon it, after it had re- 
ceived the last touch of His creating hand,' reviewed 
the earth, and the waters, and the firmament, and 
all the green herbage, with the living creatures, and 
the man whom He had raised in dominion over 
them, and He saw every thing that He had made, 
and behold it was all very good. They forget that 
on the birth of materialism, when it stood out in 
the freshness of those glories which the great Archi- 
tect of Nature had impressed upon it, that then 
" the morning stars sang together, and all the sons 
of God shouted for joy/' They forget the appeals 
that are made everywhere in the Bible to this ma- 
terial workmanship — and how from the face of these 
visible heavens, and the garniture of this earth that 
we tread upon, the greatness and the goodness of 
God are reflected on the view of His worshippers. 
No, my brethren, the object of the administration 
we sit under, is to extirpate sin, but it is not to 
sweep away materialism. By the convulsions of the 
last day, it may be shaken and broken down from 



NEW HEAVENS AND NEW EARTH. 281 

its present arrangements, and thrown into such fit- 
ful agitations, as that the whole of its existing 
framework shall fall to pieces ; and with a heat so 
fervent as to melt its most solid elements, may it be 
utterly dissolved. And thus may the earth again 
become without form and void, but without one 
particle of its substance going into annihilation. 
Out of the ruins of this second chaos, may another 
heaven and another earth be made to arise ; and a 
new materialism, w r ith other aspects of magnificence 
and beauty, emerge from the wreck of this mighty 
transformation ; and the world be peopled as before, 
with the varieties of material loveliness, and space 
be again lighted up into a firmament of material 
splendour. 

Were our place of everlasting blessedness so purely 
spiritual as it is commonly imagined, then the soul 
of man, after, at death, having quitted his body, 
w r ould quit it conclusively. That mass of materialism 
with which it is associated upon earth, and which 
many regard as a load and an encumbrance, would 
have leave to putrefy in the grave, without being 
revisited by supernatural power, or raised again out 
of the inanimate dust into which it had resolved. 
If the body be indeed a clog and a confinement to 
the spirit instead of its commodious tenement, then 
would the spirit feel lightened by the departure it 
had made, and expatiate in all the buoyancy of its 
emancipated powers over a scene of enlargement. 
And this is, doubtless, the prevailing imagination. 
But why then, after having made its escape from 
such a thraldom, should it ever recur to the prison- 
house of its old materialism, if a prison-house it 



282 NEW HEAVENS AND NEW EARTH. 

really be. Why should the disengaged spirit again 
be fastened to the drag of that grosser and heavier 
substance, which many think has only the effect of 
weighing down its activity, and infusing into the 
pure element of mind an ingredient which serves to 
cloud and to enfeeble it I In other words, what is 
the use of a day of resurrection, if the union which 
then takes place is to deaden or to reduce all those 
energies that are commonly ascribed to the living 
principle, in a state of separation ? But, as a proof 
of some metaphysical delusion upon this subject, 
the product, perhaps, of a wrong though fashion- 
able philosophy, it would appear, that to embody the 
spirit is not the stepping-stone to its degradation, 
but to its preferment. The last day will be a day of 
triumph to the righteous — because the day of the 
re-entrance of the spirit to its much loved abode, 
where its faculties, so far from being shut up into 
captivity, will find their free and kindred develop- 
ment in such material organs as are suited to them. 
The fact of the resurrection proves, that, with man 
at least, the state of a disembodied spirit is a state 
of unnatural violence — and that the resurrection of 
his body is an essential step to the highest perfec- 
tion of which he is susceptible. And it is indeed 
an homage to that materialism, which many are for 
expunging from the future state of the universe 
altogether — that ere the immaterial soul of man has 
reached the ultimate glory and blessedness which 
are designed for it, it must return and knock at that 
very grave where lie the mouldered remains of the 
body which it wore — and there inquisition must be 
made for the flesh, and the sinews, and the bones, 



NEW HEAVENS AND NEW EARTH. 



?83 



which the power of corruption has perhaps for cen 
turies before assimilated to the earth that is around 
them — and there the minute atoms must be re- 
assembled into a structure that bears upon it the 
form and the lineaments and the general aspect of 
a man — and the soul passes into this material 
framework, which is hereafter to be its lodging-place 
for ever — and that, not as its prison, but as its 
pleasant and befitting habitation — not to be tram- 
melled, as some would have it, in a hold of material- 
ism, but to be therein equipped for the services of 
eternity — to walk embodied among the bowers of 
our second paradise — to stand embodied in the pre- 
sence of our God. 

There will, it is true, be a change of personal 
constitution between a good man before his death, 
and a good man after his resurrection — not, however, 
that he will be set free from his body, but that he 
will be set free from the corrupt principle which is 
in his body — not that the materialism by which he 
is now surrounded will be done away, but that the 
taint of evil by which this materialism is now per- 
illed, will be done away. Could this be effected 
without dying, then death would be no longer an 
essential stepping-stone to paradise. But it would 
appear of the moral virus which has been transmit- 
ted downwards from Adam, and is now spread 
abroad over the whole human family — it would ap- 
pear that to get rid of this, the old fabric must be 
taken down and reared anew ; and that not of 
other materials, but of its own materials, only de- 
livered of all impurity, as if by a refining process in 
the sepulchre. It is thus, that what is "sown in 



284 



NEW HEAVENS AND NEW EARTH. 



weakness, is raised in power" — and for this purpose, 
it is not necessary to get quit of materialism, but to 
get quit of sin, and so to purge materialism of its ma- 
lady. It is thus that the dead shall come forth incor- 
ruptible — and those, we are told, who are alive at this 
great catastrophe, shall suddenly and mysteriously 
be changed. While we are compassed about with 
these vile bodies, as the Apostle emphatically terms 
them, evil is present, and it is well, if through the 
working of the Spirit of grace, evil does not prevail. 
To keep this besetting enemy in check is ,the task 
and the trial of our Christianity on earth — and it is 
the detaching of this poisonous ingredient which con- 
stitutes that for which the believer is represented as 
groaning earnestly, even the redemption of the body 
that he now wears, and which will then be trans- 
formed into the likeness of Christ's glorified body. 
And this will be his heaven, that he will serve God 
without a struggle, and in a full gale of spiritual 
delight — because with the full concurrence of all the 
feelings and all the faculties of his regenerated 
nature. Before death, sin is only repressed — after 
the resurrection, sin will be exterminated. Here 
he has to maintain the combat with a tendency to 
evil still lodging in his heart, and working a per- 
verse movement among his inclinations ; but after 
his warfare in this world is accomplished, he will no 
longer be so thwarted — and he will set him down in 
another world, with the repose and the triumph of 
victory for his everlasting reward. The great con- 
stitutional plague of his nature will no longer 
trouble him ; and there will be the charm of a 
general affinity between the purity of his heart and 



NEW HEAVENS AND NEW EARTH. tffS 

the purity of the element he breathes in. Still it 
will not be the purity of spirit escaped from materi- 
alism, but of spirit translated into a materialism that 
has been clarified of evil. It will not be the purity 
of souls unclothed as at death, but the purity of 
souls that have again been clothed upon at the re- 
surrection. 

But the highest homage that we know of to ma- 
terialism, is that which God, manifest in the flesh, 
has rendered to it. That He, the Divinity, should 
have wrapt His unfathomable essence in one of its 
coverings, and expatiated amongst us in the palpable 
form and structure of a man \ and that He should 
have chosen such a tenement, not as a temporary 
abode, but should have borne it with Him to the 
place which He now occupies, and where He is now 
employed in preparing the mansions of His followers 
— that He should have entered within the vail, and 
be now seated at the right hand of the Father, with 
the very body which was marked by the nails upon 
His cross, and wherewith he ate and drank after 
His resurrection — that He who repelled the imagi- 
nation of His disciples, as if they had seen a spirit, 
by bidding them handle Him and see, and subjecting 
to their familiar touch the flesh and the bones that 
encompassed Him ; that He should now be throned 
in universal supremacy, and wielding the whole 
power of heaven and earth, have every knee to bow 
at His name, and every tongue to confess, and yet 
all to the glory of God the Father — that humanity, 
that substantial and embodied humanity, should 
thus be exalted, and a voice of adoration from every 
creature be lifted up to the Lamb for ever and ever 



286 



NEW HEAVENS AND NEW EARTH. 



— does this look like the abolition of materialism, 
after the present system of it is destroyed ; or does 
it not rather prove, that transplanted into another 
system, it will be preferred to celestial honours, and 
prolonged in immortality throughout all ages ? 

It has been our careful endeavour in all that we 
have said, to keep within the limits of the record, 
and to offer no other remarks than those which may 
fitly be suggested by the circumstance, that a new 
earth is to be created, as well as a new heavens, for 
the future accommodation of the righteous. We 
have no desire to push the speculation beyond what 
is written — but it were, at the same time, well, that 
in all our representations of the immortal state, 
there was just the same force of colouring, and the 
same vivacity of scenic exhibition, that there is in 
the New Testament. The imagination of a total 
and diametric opposition between the region of sense 
and the region of spirituality, certainly tends to 
abate the interest with which we might otherwise 
look to the perspective that is on the other side of 
the grave ; and to deaden all those sympathies that 
we else might have with the joys and the exercises 
of the blest in paradise. To rectify this, it is not 
necessary to enter on the particularities of heaven 
— a topic on which the Bible is certainly most 
sparing and reserved in its communications. But a 
great step is gained, simply by dissolving the alliance 
that exists in the minds of many between the two 
ideas of sin and materialism ; or proving, that when 
once sin is done away, it consists with all w T e know 
of God's administration, that materialism shall bo 
perpetuated in the full bloom and vigour of immor- 



NEW HEAVENS AND NEW EARTH. 



287 



tality. It altogether holds out a warmer and more 
alluring picture of the elysium that awaits us, when 
told, that there will be beauty to delight the eye, 
and music to regale the ear, and the comfort that 
springs from all the charities of intercourse between 
man and man, holding converse as they do on earth 
and gladdening each other with the benignant smiles 
that play on the human countenance, or the accents 
of kindness that fall in soft and soothing melody 
from the human voice. There is much of the inno- 
cent, and much of the inspiring, and much to affect 
and elevate the heart, in the scenes and the contem- 
plations of materialism — and we do hail the infor- 
mation of our text, that after the dissolution of its 
present framework, it will again be varied and 
decked out anew in all the graces of its unfading 
verdure and of its unbounded variety — that in ad- 
dition to our direct and personal view of the Deity, 
when He comes down to tabernacle with men, we 
shall also have the reflection of Him in a lovely 
mirror of His own workmanship — and that instead 
of being transported to some abode of dimness and 
of mystery, so remote from human experience as to 
be beyond all comprehension, we shall walk forever 
in a land replenished with those sensible delights 
and those sensible glories, which, we doubt not, will 
lie most profusely scattered over the "new heavens 
and the new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness 

II. But though a paradise of sense, it will not be 
a paradise of sensuality. Though not so unlike the 
present world as many apprehend it, there will be one 
point of total dissimilarity betwixt them. It is 
not the entire substitution of spirit for matter that 



288 NEW HEAVENS AND NEW EARTH. 

| 

will distinguish the future economy from the present. 
But it will be the entire substitution of righteous- 
ness for sin. It is this which signalizes the Chris- 
tian from the Mahometan paradise ; not that sense, 
and substance, and splendid imagery, and the glories 
of a visible creation seen with bodily eyes are ex- 
cluded from it, — but that all which is vile in prin- 
ciple or voluptuous in impurity will be utterly 
excluded from it. There will be a firm earth as we 
have at present, and a heaven stretched over it as 
we have at present ; and it is not by the absence of 
these, but by the absence of sin, that the abodes of 
immortality will be characterized. There will both 
be heavens and earth, it would appear, in the next 
great administration — and with this specialty to 
mark it from the present one, that it will be a 
heavens and an earth, " wherein dwelleth righteous- 
ness/' 

Now, though the first topic of information that 
we educed from the text, may be regarded as not 
very practical, yet the second topic on which we 
now insist, is most eminently so. Were it the great 
characteristic of that spirituality which is to obtain 
in a future heaven, that it was a spirituality of es- 
sence then occupying and pervading the place from 
which materialism had been swept away, we could 
not, by any possible method, approximate the con- 
dition we are in at present to the condition we are 
to hold everlastingly. We cannot cthcrcalizc the 
matter that is around us — neither can we attenuate 
our own bodies, nor bring down the slightest degree 
of such a heaven to the earth that we now inhabit. 
But when we are told that materialism is to be kept 



NEW HEAVENS AND NEW EARTH. 



up, and that the spirituality of our future state lies 
not in the kind of substance which is to compose 
its framework, but in the character of those who 
people it — this puts, if not the fulness of heaven, 
at least a foretaste of heaven, within our reach. We 
have not to strain at a thing so impracticable as 
that of diluting the material economy which is with- 
out us — we have only to reform the moral economy 
that is within us. We are now walking on a terres- 
trial surface, not more compact, perhaps, than the 
one we shall hereafter walk upon, and are now wear- 
ing terrestrial bodies, not firmer and more solid, per- 
haps, than those we shall hereafter wear. It is not 
by working any change upon them, that we could 
realize to any extent our future heaven. And this 
is simply done by opening the door of our heart for 
the influx of heaven's affections — by bringing the 
whole man, as made up of soul, and spirit, and body, 
under the presiding authority of heaven's principles. 

This will make plain to you how it is that it 
could be said in the New Testament, that the 
ft kingdom of heaven was at hand"' — and how, in 
that book, its place is marked out, not by locally 
pointing to any quarter, and saying, Lo, here, or lo, 
there, but by the simple affirmation that the king- 
dom of heaven is within you — and how, in defining 
what it was that constituted the kingdom of heaven, 
there is an enumeration, not of such circumstances 
as make up an outward condition, but of such feel- 
ings and qualities as make up a character, even 
righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy 
Ghost — and how the ushering in of the new dis- 
pensation is held equivalent to the introduction of 

i T 



290 



NEW HEAVENS AND NEW EARTH. 



this kingdom into the world — all making it evident, 
that if the purity and the principles of heaven be- 
gin to take effect upon our heart, what is essentially 
heaven begins with us even in this world ; that in- 
stead of ascending to some upper region for the pur- 
pose of entering it, it may descend upon us, and 
make an actual entrance of itself into our bosoms ; 
and that so far, therefore, from that remote and 
inaccessible thing which many do regard it, it may, 
through the influence of the word which is nigh 
unto you, and of the Spirit that is given to prayer, 
be lighted up in the inner man of an individual 
upon earth, whose person may even here exemplify 
its graces, and whose soul may even here realize a 
measure of its enjoyments. 

And hence one great purpose of the incarnation 
of our Saviour. He came down amongst us in the 
full perfection of heaven's character, and has made 
us see that it is a character which may be em- 
bodied. All its virtues were, in His case, infused 
into a corporeal framework, and the substance of 
these lower regions was taken into intimate and 
abiding association with the spirit of the higher. 
The ingredient which is heavenly, admits of being 
united with the ingredient which is earthly — so 
that we, who by nature are of the earth and 
earthly, could we catch of that pure and celes- 
tial element which made the man Christ Jesus 
to differ from all other men, then might we too be 
formed into that character, by which it is that the 
members of the family above differ from those of 
the outcast family beneath. Now, it is expressly 
said of Him, that He is set before us as an exam- 



NEW HEAVENS AND NEW EARTH. 



291 



pie ; and we are required to look to that living ex- 
hibition of Him, where all the graces of the upper 
sanctuary are beheld as in a picture ; and instead 
of an abstract, we have in His history a familiar 
representation of such worth, and piety, and ex- 
cellence, as could they only be stamped upon our 
own persons, and borne along with us to the place 
where He now dwelleth — instead of being shunned 
as aliens, we should be welcomed and recognised 
as seemly companions for the inmates of that place 
of holiness. And, in truth, the great work of Christ's 
disciples upon earth, is a constant and busy process 
of assimilation to their Master who is in heaven. 
And we live under a special economy that has been 
set up for the express purpose of helping it forward. 
It is for this, in particular, that the Spirit is pro- 
vided. We are changed into the image of the 
Lord, even by the Spirit of the Lord. Nursed 
out of this fulness, we grow up unto the stature of 
perfect men in Christ Jesus — and instead of heaven 
being a remote and mysterious unknown, heaven 
is brought near to us by the simple expedient of 
inspiring us where we now stand, with its love, and 
its purity, and its sacredness. We learn from 
Christ, that the heavenly graces are all of them com- 
patible with the wear of an earthly body, and the 
circumstances of an earthly habitation. It is not 
said in how many of its features the new earth will 
differ from or be like unto the present one — but 
we, by turning from our iniquities unto Christ, 
push forward the resemblance of the one to the 
other, in the only feature that is specified, even that 
" therein dwelleth righteousness." 



2i)2 



NEW HEAVENS AND NEW EARTH. 



And had we only the character of heaven, we 
should not be long of feeling what that is which 
essentially makes the comfort of heaven. "Thou 
loves t righteousness and hatest iniquity ; therefore, 
God thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of 
gladness above thy fellows/' Let us but love the 
righteousness which He loves, and hate the iniquity 
which He hateth ; and this, of itself, would so soften 
and attune the mechanism of our moral nature, that 
in all the movements of it there should be joy. It 
is not sufficiently adverted to, that the happiness of 
heaven lies simply and essentially in the well-going 
machinery of a well-conditioned soul — and that ac- 
cording to its measure, it is the same in kind with 
the happiness of God, who liveth for ever in bliss in- 
effable, because He is unchangeable in being good 
and upright and holy. There may be audible music 
in heaven, but its chief delight will be in the music 
of well-poised affections, and of principles in full and 
consenting harmony with the laws of eternal recti- 
tude. There may be visions of loveliness there ; but 
it will be the loveliness of virtue, as seen directly in 
God, and as reflected back again in family likeness 
from all His children — it will be this that shall give 
its purest and sweetest transports to the soul. In a 
Av r ord, the main reward of paradise is spiritual joy, 
and that springing at once from the love and the 
possession of spiritual excellence. It is such a joy 
as sin extinguishes on the moment of its entering 
the soul ; and such a joy as is again restored to the 
soul, and that immediately on its being restored to 
righteousness. 

It is thus that heaven may be established upon 



NEW HEAVENS AND NEW EARTH. 



2J3 



earth, and the petition of our Lord's prayer be ful- 
filled, (i Thy kingdom come/' This petition receives 
its best explanation from the one which follows : 
" Thy will be done in earth as it is done in heaven/' 
It just requires a similarity of habit and character 
in the two places, to make out a similarity of enjoy- 
ment. Let us attend, then, to the way in which the 
services of the upper sanctuary are rendered — not in 
the spirit of legality, for this gendereth to bondage ; 
but in the spirit of love, which gendereth to the 
beatitude of the affections, rejoicing in their best and 
most favourite indulgence. They do not work there 
for the purpose of making out the conditions of a 
bargain. They do not act agreeably to the pleasure 
of God, in order to obtain the gratification of any 
distinct will or distinct pleasure of their own in re- 
turn for it. Their will is, in fact, identical with the 
will of God.. There is a perfect unison of t.aste and 
of inclination between the creature and the Creator. 
They are in their element when they are feeling 
righteously and doing righteously. Obedience is not 
drudgery but delight to them ; and as much as there 
is of the congenial between animal nature and the 
food that is suitable to it, so much is there of the 
congenial between the moral nature of heaven and 
its sacred employments and services. Let the will 
of God, then, be done here as it is done there, and 
not only will character and conduct be the same here 
as there, but they will also resemble each other in 
the style though not in the degree of their blessed- 
ness. The happiness of heaven will be exemplified 
upon earth along with the virtue of heaven — for, in 
truth, the main ingredient of that happiness is not 



294 



NEW HEAVENS AND NEW EARTH, 



given them in payment for work ; but it lies in the 
love they bear to the work itself. A man is never 
happier than when employed in that which he likes 
best. This is all a question of taste: but should 
such a taste be given as to make it a man's meat and 
drink to do the will of his Father, then is he in per- 
fect readiness for being carried upwards to heaven, 
and placed beside the pure river of water of life that 
proceedeth out of the throne of God and of the Lamb. 
This is the way in which you may make a heaven 
upon earth, not by heaping your reluctant oilers at 
the shrine of legality, but by serving God because 
you love Him ; and doing His will, because you 
delight to do Him honour. 

And here we may remark, that the only possible 
conveyance for this new principle into the heart, is 
the Gospel of Jesus Christ — that in no other way 
than through the acceptance of its free pardon, sealed 
by the blood of an atonement, which exalts the Law- 
giver, can the soul of man be both emancipated from 
the fear of terror, and solemnized into the fear of 
humble and holy reverence — that it is only in con- 
junction with the faith that justifies, that the love 
of gratitude and the love of moral esteem are made 
to arise in the bosom of regenerated man ; and, 
therefore, to bring down the virtues of heaven, as 
well as the peace of heaven, into this lower world, 
we know not what else can be done, than to urge 
upon you the great propitiation of the New Testa- 
ment — nor are we aware of any expedient by which 
all the cold and freezing sensations of legality can 
be done away, but by your thankful and uncondi- 
tional acceptance of Jesus Christ, and him crucified. 



NATURE OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 



295 



DISCOURSE V. 

THE NATURE OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 



"For the kingdom of God is not in word, but in power." — 
1 Corinthians iv. 20. 

There is a most important lesson to be derived 
from the variety of senses in which the phrases " king- 
dom of God " and " kingdom of heaven " are evi- 
dently made use of in the New Testament. If it at 
one time carry our thoughts to that place where God 
sits in visible glory, and where, surrounded by the 
family of the blessed, He presides in full and 
spiritual authority — it at another time turns our 
thoughts inwardly upon ourselves, and instead of 
leading us to say, Lo, here, or lo, there, as if to some 
local habitation at a distance, it leads us, by the de- 
claration that the " kingdom of God is within us/' 
to look for it into our own breast, and to examine 
whether heavenly affections have been substituted 
there in the place of earthly ones. Such is the tend- 
ency of our imagination upon this subject, that the 
kingdom of heaven is never mentioned without our 
minds being impelled thereby to take an upward 
direction — to go aloft to that place of spaciousness, 
and of splendour, and of psalmody, which forms the 
residence of angels ; and wdiere the praises both of 
redeemed and unfallen creatures rise in one anthem 



296 



NATURE OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 



of gratulation to the Father, who rejoices over them 
all. Now, it is evident, that in dwelling upon such 
an elysium as this, the mind can picture to itself a 
thousand delicious accompaniments, which, apart 
from moral and spiritual character altogether, are 
fitted to regale animal, and sensitive, and unrenewed 
man. There may be sights of beauty and brilliancy 
for the eye. There may be sounds of sweetest melody 
for the ear. There may be innumerable sensations 
of delight, from the adaptation which obtains between 
the materialism of surrounding heaven, and the ma- 
terialism of our own transformed and glorified bodies. 
There may even be poured upon us, in richest abund- 
ance, a higher and a nobler class of enjoyments — 
and separate still from the possession of holiness, 
of that peculiar quality, by the accession of which 
a sinner is turned into a saint, and the man who 
before had an entire aspect of secularity and of 
the world, looks as if he had been cast over again 
in another mould, and come out breathing godly 
desires, and aspiring, with a newly created fervour, 
after godly enjoyments. And so, without any such 
conversion as this, heaven may still be conceived 
to minister a set of very refined and intellectual 
gratifications. One may figure it so formed as to 
adapt itself to the senses of man, though he should 
possess not one single virtue of the temple or of 
the sanctuary — and one may figure it to be so 
formed, as, though alike destitute of these virtues, 
to adapt itself even to the spirit of man, and to 
many of the loftier principles and capacities of his 
nature. His taste may find an ever-recurring 
delight in the panorama of its sensible glories ; and 



NATURE OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 



297 



his fancy wander untired among all the realities and 
all the possibilities of created excellence ; and his 
understanding be feasted to ecstasy among those 
endless varieties of truth which are ever pouring 
in a rich flood of discovery upon his mind ; and 
even his heart be kept in a glow of warm and kindly 
affection among the cordialities of that benevolence 
by which he is surrounded. All this is possible to 
be conceived of heaven — and when we add its secure 
and everlasting exemption from the agonies of hell, 
let us not wonder that such a heaven should b$ 
vehemently desired by those who have not advanced 
by the very humblest degree of spiritual preparation 
for the real heaven of the New Testament — who 
have not the least congeniality of feeling with that 
which forms its essential and characteristic blessed- 
ness — who cannot sustain on earth for a very short 
interval of retirement, the labour and the weariness 
of communion with God — who, though they could 
relish to the uttermost all the sensible and all the 
intellectual joys of heaven, yet hold no taste of 
sympathy whatever with its hallelujahs and its 
songs of raptured adoration — and who, therefore, 
if transported at this moment, or if transported 
after death, with the frame and character of soul 
that they have at this moment, to the New Jerusa- 
lem, and the city of the living God, would positively 
find themselves aliens, and out of their kindred and 
rejoicing element, however much they may sigh 
after a paradise of pleasure or a paradise of poetry. 

It may go to dissipate this sentimental illusion, 
if we ponder well the meaning which is often 
assigned to the kingdom of heaven in the Bible — if 



298 NATURE OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 

we reflect, that it is often made to attach personally 
to a human creature upon earth — as well as to be 
situated locally in some distant and mysterious 
region away from us — that to be the subjects of 
such a kingdom, it is not indispensable that our 
residence be within the limits of an assigned 
territory, any more, in fact, than that the subject of 
an earthly sovereign should not remain so, though 
travelling, for a time, beyond the confines of his 
master's jurisdiction. He may, though away from 
his country in person, carry about with him in mind 
a full principle of allegiance to his country's 
sovereign — and may both, in respect of legal duty, 
and of his own most willing and affectionate com- 
pliance with it, remain associated with him both 
in heart and in political relationship. He is still a 
member of that kingdom in the domains of which 
he was born — and in the very same way may a man 
be travelling the journey of life in this world, and 
be all the while a member of the kingdom of 
heaven. The Being who reigns in supreme authority 
there, may, even in this land of exile and alienation, 
have some one devoted subject who renders to the 
same authority the deference of his heart and the 
subordination of his whole practice. The will of 
God may possess such a moral ascendency over his 
will, as that when the one commands, the other 
promptly and cheerfully obeys. The character of 
God may stand revealed in such charms of perfec- 
tion and gracefulness to the eye of his mind, that 
by ever looking to Him, he both loves and is made 
like unto Him. A sense of God may pervade his 
every hour and every employment, even as it is 



NATURE OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 



299 



the hand of God which preserves him continually, 
and through the actual power of God that he lives 
and moves as well as has his being. Such a man, 
if such a man there be on the face of our world, 
has the kingdom of God set up in his heart. He 
is already one of the children of the kingdom. He 
is not locally in heaven, and yet his heaven is begun. 
He has in his eye the glories of heaven ; though as 
yet he sees them through a glass darkly. He feels 
in his bosom the principles of heaven ; though still 
at war with the propensities of nature, they do not 
yet reign in all the freeness of an undisputed ascend- 
ency. He carries in his heart the peace, and the 
joy, and the love, and the elevation of heaven ; 
though under the encumbrance of a vile body, the 
spiritual repast which is thus provided, is not with- 
out its mixtures and without its mitigation. In a 
word, the essential elements of heaven's reward, 
and of heaven's felicity, are all in his possession. 
He tastes the happiness of heaven in kind, though 
not in its full and finished degree. When he gets 
to heaven above, he will not meet there with a 
happiness differing in character from that which he 
now feels ; but only higher in gradation. There 
may be crowns of material splendour. There may 
be trees of unfading loveliness. There may be 
pavements of emerald — and canopies of brightest 
radiance — and gardens of deep and tranquil security 
— and palaces of proud and stately decoration — 
and a city of lofty pinnacles, through which there 
unceasing flows a river of gladness, and where 
jubilee is ever rung with the concord of seraphic 
voices. But these are only the accessories of 



NATURE OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 



Leaven. They form not the materials of it? 
substantial blessedness. Of this the man who toil 
in humble drudgery an utter stranger to the delight? 
of sensible pleasure, or the fascinations of sensible 
glory, lias got already a foretaste in his heart. It 
consists not in the enjoyment of created good, nor 
in the survey of created magnificence. It is drawn 
in a direct stream through the channels of love 
and of contemplation from the fulness of the Crea- 
tor. It emanates from the countenance of God, 
manifesting the spiritual glories of His holy and 
perfect character, on those whose characters are 
kindred to His own. And if on earth there is no 
tendency towards such a character — no process of 
restoration to the lost image of the Grodhead — no 
delight in prayer — no relish for the sweets of inter- 
course with our Father, now unseen, but then to be 
revealed to the view of His immediate worshippers 
— then, let our imaginations kindle as they may 
with the beatitudes of our fictitious heaven, the true 
heaven of the Bible is what we shall never reach, 
because it is a heaven that we are not fitted to 
enjoy. 

But such a view of the matter seems not merely 
to dissipate a sentimental illusion which obtains 
upon this subject. It also serves to dissipate a 
theological illusion. Ere we can enter heaven, 
there must be granted to us a legal capacity of 
admission — and Christ by His atoning death and 
perfect righteousness has purchased this capacity 
for those who believe — and they, by the very act of 
believing, are held to be in possession of it, just as 
a man by stretching out his hand to a deed or a 



NATURE OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 



301 



passport, becomes vested with all the privileges 
which are thereby conveyed to the holder. Now, 
in the zeal of controversialists, (and it is a point 
most assuredly about which they cannot be too 
zealous) — in their zeal to clear up and to demon- 
strate the ground on which the sinner's legal 
capacity must rest — there has, with many, been a 
sad overlooking of what is no less indispensable, 
even his personal capacity. And yet even on the 
lowest and grossest conceptions of what that is 
which constitutes the felicity of heaven, it would be 
no heaven, and no place of enjoyment at all, 
without a personal adaptation on the part of its 
occupiers to the kind of happiness which is current 
there. If that happiness consisted entirely in sights 
of magnificence, of what use would it be to confer 
a title-deed of entry on a man who was blind ? To 
make it heaven to him, his eyes must be opened. 
Or, if that happiness consisted in sounds of melody, 
of what use would a passport be to the man who was 
deaf? To make out a heaven for him, a change 
must be made on the person which he wears, as well 
as in the place which he occupies — and his ears 
must be unstopped. Or, if that happiness consisted 
in fresh and perpetual accessions of new and 
delightful truth to the understanding, what would 
rights and legal privileges avail to him who was 
sunk in helpless idiotism ? To provide him with 
a heaven, it is not enough that he be transported 
to a place among the mansions of the celestial ; he 
must be provided with a new faculty — and, as before, 
a change behoved to be made upon the senses ; so 
now, ere heaven can be heaven to its occupier, a 



302 



NATURE OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 



change must be made upon his mind. And, in like 
manner, my brethren, if that happiness shall consist 
in the love of God for His goodness, and in the love 
of God for the moral and spiritual excellence which 
belongs to Him — if it shall consist in the play and 
exercise of affections directed to such objects as are 
alone worthy of their most exalted regard — if it shall 
consist in the movements of a heart now attracted 
in reverence and admiration towards all that is 
noble and righteous and holy — it is not enough to 
constitute a heaven for the sinner, that God is there 
in visible manifestation, or that heaven is lighted up 
to him in a blaze of spiritual glory. His heart 
must be made a fit recipient for the impression of 
that glory. Of what possible enjoyment to him is 
heaven, as his purchased inheritance, if heaven be 
not also his precious and his much-loved home ? 
To create enjoyment for a man, there must be a 
suitableness between the taste that is in him and 
the objects that are around him. To make a 
natural man happy upon earth, we may let his taste 
alone, and surround him with favourable circum- 
stances — with smiling abundance, and merry com- 
panionship, and bright anticipations of fortune 
or of fame, and the salutations of public respect, 
and the gaieties of fashionable amusement, and 
the countless other pleasures of a world, which 
yields so much to delight and to diversify the short- 
lived period of its fleeting generations. To mnke 
the same man happy in heaven, it would suffice 
simply to transmit him there with the same taste, 
and to surround him with the same circumstances. 
But God has not so ordered heaven. He will not 



NATURE OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 



303 



suit the circumstances of heaven to the character of 
man — and therefore to make it, that man can be 
happy there, nothing remains but to suit the 
character of man to the circumstances of heaven — 
and therefore it is, that to bring about heaven to a 
sinner, it is not enough that there be the preparation 
of a place for him, there must be a preparation of 
him for the place — it is not enough that he be meet 
in law, he must be meet in person — it is not enough 
that there be a change in his forensic relation 
towards God, there must be a change in the actual 
disposition of his heart towards Him ; and unless 
delivered from his earth-born propensities — unless 
a clean heart be created, and a right spirit be 
renewed — unless transformed into a holy and a 
godlike character, it is quite in vain to have put a 
deed of entry into his hands — heaven will have no 
qharm for him — all its notes of rapture will fall with 
tasteless insipidity upon his ear — and justification 
itself will cease to be a privilege. 

Let us cease to wonder, then, at the frequent 
application, in Scripture, of this phrase to a state 
of personal feeling and character upon earth — and 
rather let us press upon our remembrance the im- 
portant lessons which are to be gathered from such 
an application. In that passage where it is said, 
that the " kingdom of God is not meat and drink, 
but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy 
Ghost/' there can be no doubt that the reference 
is altogether personal, for the Apostle is here con- 
trasting the man who in these things serveth Christ, 
with the man who eateth unto the Lord, or who 
eateth not unto the Lord. And in the passage now 



:]04 NATURE OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 

before us, there can be as little doubt, that the re- 
ference is to the kingdom of God, as fixed and sub- 
stantiated upon the character of the human soul. 
He was just before alluding to those who could talk 
of the things of Christ, while it remained question- 
able whether there was any change or any effect that 
could at all attest the power of these things upon 
their person and character. This is the point which 
he proposed to ascertain on his next visit to them. 
" I will come to you shortly, if the Lord will, and 
will know not the speech of them which are pufTed 
up, but the power. For the kingdom of God is not 
in word, but in power." It is not enough to mark 
you as the children of this kingdom ; or as those 
over whose hearts the reign of God is established ; 
or as those in whom a preparation is going on here 
for a place of glory and blessedness hereafter — -that 
you know the terms of orthodoxy, or that you can 
speak its language. If even an actual belief in its 
doctrine could reside in your mind, without fruit and 
without influence, this would as little avail you. 
But it is well to know, both from experience and 
from the information of Him who knew what was in 
man, that an actual belief of the Gospel is at all 
times an effectual belief— that upon the entrance of 
such a belief the kingdom of God comes to us faith 
power, being that which availeth, even faith working 
by love, and purifying the heart, and overcoming 
the world. 

One of the simplest cases of the kingdom of God 
in word and not in power is that of a child with 
its memory stored in passages of Scripture, and in 
ail the answers to all the questions of a substantial 



NATURE OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 



305 



and well-digested catechism. In such an instance, 
the tongue may be able to rehearse the whole ex- 
pression of evangelical truth, while neither the mean- 
ing of the truth is perceived by the understanding, 
nor of consequence, can the moral influence of the 
truth be felt in the heart. The learner has got 
words, but nothing more. This is the whole fruit of 
his acquisition — nor would it make any difference in 
as far as the effect at the time is concerned, though, 
instead of words adapted to the expression of Chris- 
tian doctrine, they had been the words of a song, or 
a fable, or any secular narrative and performance 
whatever. This is all undeniable enough — if we 
could only prevail on many men and many women 
not to deny its application to themselves — if we 
could only convince our grown-up children of the 
absolute futility of many of their exercises — if we 
could only arouse from their dormancy our listless 
readers of the Bible — our men who make a mere 
piece-work of their Christianity ; who, in making- 
way through the Scriptures, do it by the page, and 
in addressing prayers to their Maker, do it by the 
sentence ; with whom the perusal of the sacred 
volume is absolutely little better than a mere ex- 
ercise of the lip or of the eye, and a preference for 
orthodoxy is little better than a preference for certain 
familiar and well-known sounds ; where the thinking 
principle is almost never in contact with the matter 
of theological truth, however conversant both their 
mouths and their memories may be with the language 
of it — so that in fact the doctrine by the knowledge 
of which, and the power of which, it is that we are 
saved, lies as effectually hidden from their minds, as 



306 



NATURE OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 



if it lay wrapt in hieroglyphical obscurity ; or as 
if their intellectual organ was shut against all com- 
munication with any thing without them — and thus 
it is, that what is not perceived by the mental eye, 
having no possible operation upon the mental feel- 
ings or mental purposes, the kingdom of Godcometh 
to them iu word only, while not in power. 

But again, what is translated word in this verse, 
is also capable of being rendered by the term reason. 
It may not only denote that which constitutes the 
material vehicle by which the argument conceived 
in the mind of one man is translated into the mind 
of another — it may also denote the argument itself ; 
and when rendered in this way, it offers to our notice 
a very interesting case of which there are not want- 
ing many exemplifications. In the case just now 
adverted to, the mere word is in the mouth, without 
its corresponding idea being in the mind ; but in 
the case immediately befoie us, ideas are present as 
well as words, and every intellectual faculty is at 
its post for the purpose of entertaining them — the 
attention most thoroughly awake — and the curiosity 
on the stretch of its utmost eagerness — and the 
judgment most busily employed in the work of com- 
paring one doctrine and one declaration with an- 
other — and the reason conducting its long or its 
intricate processes — and, in a word, the whole ma- 
chinery of the mind as powerfully stimulated by a 
theological as it ever can be by a natural or scien- 
tific speculation — and yet w,itl) this seeming ad- 
vancement that it makes from the language of Chris- 
tianity to the substance of Christianity, what shall 
we think of it if there be no advancement whatever 



NATURE OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 



307 



in the power of Christianity — no accession to the 
soul of any one of those three ingredients, which, 
taken together, make up the Apostle's definition of 
the kingdom of God — no augmentation either of its 
righteousness or its peace or its joy in the Holy 
Ghost — the man, no doubt, very much engrossed 
and exercised with the subject of divinity, but with 
as little of the real spirit and character of divinity 
thereby transferred into his own spirit and his own 
character as if he were equally engrossed and 
equally exercised with the subject of mathematics — 
remaining in short, after all his doctrinal acquisi- 
tions of the truth, an utter stranger to the moral 
influence of the truth — and proving in the fact of his 
being practically and personally the very same man 
as before, that if the kingdom of God is not in word, 
it is as little in argument, but in power. 

If it be of importance to know, that a man may 
lay hold by his memory of all the language of 
Christianity, and yet not be a Christian — it is also 
of importance to know, that a man may lay hold by 
his understanding of all the doctrine of Christianity, 
and yet not be a Christian. It is our opinion that 
in this case the man has only an apparent belief 
without having an actual belief — that all the doctrine 
is conceived by him without being credited by him 
— that it is the object of his fancy without being 
the object of his faith — and that, as on the one hand, 
if the conviction be real, the consequence of another 
heart and another character will be sure — so on 
the other hand, and on the principle of " by their 
fruits shall ye know them/' if he want the fruit, it 
is just because he is in want of the foundation — if 



308 NATURE OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 

there be no produce, it is because there is no prin- 
ciple — having experienced no salvation from sin 
here, he shall experience no salvation from the 
abode of sinners hereafter. If faith were present 
with him, he would be kept by the power of it unto 
salvation, from both — but destitute as he proves 
himself to be now of the faith which sanctifies, he 
will be found then, in the midst of all his semblances 
and all his delusions, to have been equally destitute 
of the faith which justifies. 

And it is perhaps not so difficult to stir up in 
the mind of the learned controversialist and the 
deeply-exercised scholar the suspicion, that with 
all his acquirements in the lore of theology, he is 
in respect of its personal influence upon himself, 
still in a state of moral and spiritual unsoundness — 
it is not so difficult to raise this feeling of self-con- 
demnation in his mind, as it is to do it in the mind of 
him who has selected his one favourite article, and 
there resolved if die he must to die hard, has taken 
up his obstinate and immovable position — and re- 
tinner within the entrenchment of a few verses of 
the Bible, will defy all the truth and all the thunder 
of its remaining declarations ; and with an ortho- 
doxy which carries on all its play in his head with- 
out one moving or one softening touch upon his 
heart, will stand out to the eye of the world, both in 
avowed principle, and in its corresponding practice, 
a secure, sturdy, firm, impregnable Antinomian. 
He thinks that he will have heaven because he has 
faith. But if his faith do not bring the virtues of 
heaven into his heart, it will never spread cither the 
glory or the security of heaven around his person. 



NATURE OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 



309 



The region to whicli he vainly thinks of looking for- 
ward is a region of spirituality — and he himself 
must be spiritualized ere it can prove to him a 
region of enjoyment. If he count on a different 
paradise from this, he is as widely mistaken as they 
who dream of the luxury that awaits them in the 
paradise of Mahomet. He misinterprets the whole 
undertaking of Jesus Christ. He degrades the sal- 
vation which He hath achieved, into a salvation 
from animal pain. He transforms the heaven which 
He has opened, into a heaven of animal gratifica- 
tions. He forgets that on the great errand of man's 
restoration, it is not more necessary to recall our de- 
parted species to the heaven from which they had 
wandered, than it is to recall to the bosom of man 
its departed worth and its departed excellence. 
The one is wdiat faith will do on the other side of 
death. But the other just as certainly faith must 
do on this side of death. It is here that heaven 
begins. It is here that eternal life is entered upon. 
It is here that man first breathes the air of immor- 
tality. It is upon earth that he learns the rudiments 
of a celestial character, and first tastes of celestial 
enjoyments. It is here that the well of water is 
struck out in the heart of renovated man, and that 
fruit is made to grow unto holiness, and then, in 
the end, there is life everlasting. The man whose 
threadbare orthodoxy is made up of meagre and un- 
fruitful positions, may think that he walks in clear- 
ness, while he is only walking in the cold light of 
speculation. He walks in the feeble sparks of his 
own kindling. Were it fire from the sanctuary, it 
would impart to his unregenerated bosom of the 



310 



NATURE OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 



heat, and spirit, and love of the sanctuary. This 
is the sure result of the faith that is unfeigned — 
and all that a feigned faith can possibly make out, 
wiH be a fictitious title-deed, which will not stand 
before the light of the great day of final examina- 
tion. And thus will it be found, I fear, in many 
cases of marked and ostentatious professorship, how 
possible a thing it is to have an appearance of the 
kingdom of God in word, and the kingdom of God 
in letter, and the kingdom of God in controversy — 
while the kingdom of God is not in power. 

But once more — instead of laying a false security 
upon one article, it is possible to have a mind 
familiarized to all the articles — to admit the need of 
holiness, and to demonstrate the channel of influence 
by which it is brought down from heaven upon the 
hearts of believers — to cast an eye of intelligence 
over the whole symphony and extent of Christian 
doctrine — to lay bare those ligaments of connexion 
by which a true faith in the mind is ever sure to 
bring a new spirit and a new practice along with it 
— and to hold up the lights both of Scripture and of 
experience over the whole process of man's regenera- 
tion. It is possible for one to do all this, and yet 
to have no part in that regeneration — to declare 
with ability and effect the Gospel to others, and yet 
himself be a castaway — to unravel the whole of that 
spiritual mechanism by which a sinner is trans- 
formed into a saint, while he docs not exemplify the 
working of that mechanism in his own person — to 
explain what must be done, and what must be under- 
gone in the process of becoming one of the children 
of the kingdom, while he himself remains one of the 



NATURE OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 



311 



children of this world. To him the kingdom of God 
hath come in word, and it hath come in letter, and 
it hath come in natural discernment ; but it hath 
not come in powder. He may have profoundly studied 
the whole doctrine of the kingdom, and have con- 
ceived the various ideas of which it is composed, and 
have embodied them in words, and have poured them 
forth in utterance — and yet be as little spiritualized 
by these manifold operations, as the air is spiritual- 
ized by its being the avenue for the sounds of his 
voice to the ears of his listening auditory. The 
living man may with all the force of his active in- 
telligence be a mere vehicle of transmission. The 
Holy Ghost may leave the message to take its own 
way through his mind — and may refuse the acces- 
sion of His influence, till it make its escape from the 
lips of the preacher — and may trust for its convey- 
ance to those aerial undulations by which the report 
is carried forward to an assembled multitude — and 
may only, after the entrance of hearing has been 
effected for the terms of the message, may only, after 
the unaided powers of moral and physical nature 
have brought the matter thus far, may then, and not 
till then, add His own influence to the truths of 
the message, and send them with this impregnation 
from the ear to the conscience of any whom He 
listeth. And thus from the workings of a cold and 
desolate bosom in the human expounder, may there 
proceed a voice, which on its way to some of those 
who are assembled around him, shall turn out to 
be a voice of urgency and power. He may be the 
instrument of blessings to others, which have never 
come with kindly or effective influence upon his own 



312 NATURE OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 

heart. He may inspire an energy which he does 
not feel, and pour a comfort into the wounded 
spirit, the taste of which, and the enjoyment of 
which, is not permitted to his own — and nothing can 
serve more effectually than this experimental fact to 
humble him, and to demonstrate the existence of a 
power which cannot be wielded by all the energies 
of Nature — a power often refused to eloquence, often 
refused to the might and the glory of human wisdom 
— often refused to the most strenuous exertions of 
human might and human talent, and generally met 
with in richest abundance among the ministrations 
of the men of simplicity and prayer. 

Some of you have heard of the individual who, 
under an oppression of the severest melancholy, im- 
plored relief and counsel from his physician. The 
unhappy patient was advised to attend the perform- 
ances of a comedian who had put all the world into 
ecstasies. But it turned out that the patient was 
the comedian himself — and that while his smile was 
the signal of merriment to all, his heart stood un- 
cheered and motionless, amid the gratulations of an 
applauding theatre — and evening after evening did 
he kindle around him a rapture in which he could 
not participate — a poor, helpless, dejected mourner, 
among the tumults of that high-sounding gaiety 
which he himself had created. 

Let all this touch our breasts with the persuasion 
of the nothingness of man. Let it lead us to with- 
draw our confidence from the mere instrument, and 
to carry it upwards to Him who alone worketh all in 
all. Let it reconcile us to the arrangements of His 
providence, and assure our minds that He can do 



NATURE OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 



313 



with one arrangement what we fondly anticipated 
from another. Let us cease to be violently affected 
by the mutabilities of a fleeting and a shifting world 
— and let nothing be suffered to have the power of 
dissolving for an instant that connexion of trust 
which should ever subsist between our minds and the 
will of the all-working Deity. Above all, let us 
carefully separate between our liking for certain ac- 
companiments of the word, and our liking for the 
word itself. Let us be jealous of those human pre- 
ferences which may bespeak some human and ad- 
ventitious influence upon our hearts, and be alto- 
gether different from the influence of Christian truth 
upon Christianized and sanctified affections. Let us 
be tenacious only of one thing — not of holding by 
particular ministers — not of saying, that " I am of 
Paul, or Cephas, or Apollos" — not of idolizing the 
servant while the Master is forgotten, — but let us 
hold by the Head, even Christ. He is the source of 
all spiritual influence — and while the agents whom 
He employs can do no more than bring the kingdom 
of God to you in word — it lies w T ith him either to 
exalt one agency, or to humble and depress another 
— and either w T ith or without such an agency, by the 
demonstration of that Spirit which is given unto 
faith, to make the kingdom of God come into your 
hearts with power. 



314 



HEAVEN A CHARACTER 



DISCOURSE VI. 

HEAVEN A CHARACTER AND NOT A LOCALITY. 



" He that is unjust, let him be unjust still : and he which is filthy, 
let him be filthy still : and he that is righteous, let him be righteous 
still : and he that is holy, let him be holy still." — Rev. xxii. 11. 

Our first remark on this passage of Scripture is, 
how very palpably and nearly it connects time with 
eternity. The character wherewith we sink into the 
grave at death, is the very character wherewith we 
shall re-appear on the day of resurrection. The 
character which habit has fixed and strengthened 
through life, adheres, it would seem, to the disem- 
bodied spirit through the mysterious interval which 
separates the day of our dissolution from the day of 
our account — when it will again stand forth the very 
image and substance of what it was, to the inspection 
of the Judge and the awards of the judgment-seat. 
The moral lineaments which be graven on the tablet 
of the inner man, and which every day of an uncon- 
verted life makes deeper and more indelible than 
before, will retain the very impress they have gotten 
— unaltered and uneffaced by the transition from our 
present to our future state of existence. There will 
be a dissolution, and then a reconstruction of the 
body from the sepulchral dust into which it had 
mouldered. But there will be neither a dissolution 



AND NOT A LOCALITY. 



315 



nor a renovation of the spirit, which, indestructible 
both in character and essence, will weather and re- 
tain its identity on the mid-way passage between 
this world and the next — so that at the time of quit- 
ting its earthly tenement we may say, that, if unjust 
now it will be unjust still, if filthy now it will be 
filthy still, if righteous now it will be righteous still, 
and if holy now it will be holy still. 

Our second remark, suggested by the Scripture now 
under consideration, is, that there be many analogies 
of nature and experience which even death itself 
does not interrupt. There is nought more familiar 
to our daily observation than the power and invete- 
racy of habit — insomuch that any vicious propensity 
is strengthened by every new act of indulgence ; any 
virtuous principle is more firmly established than 
before by every new act of resolute obedience to its 
dictates. The law which connects the actings of 
boyhood or of youth with the character of manhood, 
is the identical the unrepealed law which connects 
our actings in time with our character through eter- 
nity. The way in which the moral discipline of youth 
prepares for the honours and the enjoyments of a 
virtuous manhood, is the very way in which the 
moral and spiritual discipline of a whole life prepares 
for a virtuous and happy immortality. And on the 
other hand, the succession, as of cause and effect, 
from a profligate youth or a dishonest manhood to 
a disgraced and worthless old age — is just the suc- 
cession, also of cause and effect, between the misdeeds 
and the depravities of our history on earth, and an 
inheritance of worthlessness and wretchedness for 
ever. The law of moral continuity between the dif- 



316 



HEAVEN A CHARACTER 



ferent stages of human life, is also the law of con- 
tinuity between the two worlds — which even the 
death that intervenes does not violate. Be he a 
saint or a sinner, each shall be filled with the fruit 
of his ow r n ways — so that when translated into their 
respective places of fixed and everlasting destination, 
the one shall rejoice through eternity in that pure 
element of goodness which here beloved and aspired 
after ; the other, a helpless, a degraded victim of 
those passions which lorded over him through life, 
shall be irrevocably doomed to that worst of torments 
and that worst of tyranny — the torment of his own 
accursed nature, the inexorable tyranny of evil. 

Our third remark, suggested by this Scripture, is, 
that it affords no very dubious perspective of the fu- 
ture heaven and the future hell of the New Testa- 
ment. We are aware of the material images employ- 
ed in Scripture, and by which it bodies forth its 
representation of both — of the fire, and the brimstone, 
and the lake of living agony, and the gnashing of 
teeth, and the wailings, the ceaseless wailings of dis- 
tress and despair unutterable, by which the one is 
set before us in characters of terror and most revolt- 
ing hideousness — of the splendour, the spaciousness, 
the music, the floods of melody and sights of surpass- 
ing loveliness, by which the other is set before us in 
characters of bliss and brightness unperishable; with 
all that can regale the glorified senses of creatures 
rejoicing for ever in the presence and before the 
throne of God. We stop not to inquire, and far less 
to dispute, whether these descriptions in the plain 
meaning and very letter of them are to be realized. 
But we hold that it would purge theology from many 



AND NOT A LOCALITY. 



317 



of its errors, and that it would guide and enlighten 
the practical Christianity of many honest inquirers 
— if the moral character both of heaven and hell 
were more distinctly recognised, and held a more 
prominent place in the regards and contemplations 
of men. If it indeed be true that the moral, rather 
than the material, is the main ingredient, whether of 
the coming torment or the coming ecstasy — then the 
hell of the wicked may be said to have already begun, 
and the heaven of the virtuous may be said to have 
already begun. The one, in the bitterness of an un- 
hinged and dissatisfied spirit, has a foretaste of the 
wretchedness before him ; the other, in the peace and 
triumphant complacency of an approving conscience, 
has a foretaste of the happiness before him. Each 
is ripening for his own everlasting destiny ; and 
whether in the depravities that deepen and accumu- 
late on the character of the one, or in the graces that 
brighten and multiply upon the other — we see ma- 
terials enough, either for the worm that dieth not, 
or for the pleasures that are for evermore. 

But again, it may be asked, will spiritual elements 
alone suffice to make up either the intense and 
intolerable wretchedness of a hell, or the intense 
beatitude of a heaven ? For an answer to this 
question, let us first turn your attention to the 
former of these receptacles. And we ask you to 
think of the state of that heart in respect to sensa- 
tion, which is the seat of a concentrated and all- 
absorbing selfishness, which feels for no other in- 
terest than its own, and holds no fellowship of 
truth or honesty or confidence with the fellow- 
beings around it. The owner of such a heart may 



318 



HE A YEN A CHARACTER 



live in society ; but, cut off as he is by his own 
sordid nature from the reciprocities of honourable 
feeling and good faith, he may be said to live an 
exile in the midst of it. He is a stranger to the 
day-light of the moral world; and instead of 
walking abroad on an open platform of free and 
fearless communion w T ith his fellows, he spends a 
cold and heartless existence in the hiding-place of 
his own thoughts. You mistake it, if you think 
of this creeping and ignoble creature that he knows 
aught of the real truth or substance of enjoyment ; 
or however successful he may have been in the 
wiles of his paltry selfishness, that a sincere or a 
solid satisfaction has been the result of it, On the 
contrary, if you enter his heart, you will there find 
a distaste and disquietude in the lurking sense of 
its ow T n worthlessness ; and that dissevered from 
the respect of society without, it finds no refuge 
w r ithin where he is abandoned by the respect of his 
own conscience. It does not consist with moral 
nature, that there should be internal happiness or 
internal harmony, when the moral sense is made 
to suffer perpetual violence. A man of cunning 
and concealment, however dexterous, however tri- 
umphant in his worthless policy, is nqt at ease. 
The stoop, the downcast regards, the dark and 
sinister expression, of him who cannot lift up his 
head among his fellow-men, or look his companions 
in the face, are the sensible proofs that he who 
knows himself to be dishonest feels himself to be 
degraded ; and the inward sense of dishonour which 
haunts and humbles him here, is but the commence- 
ment of that shame and everlasting contempt to 



AND NOT A LOCALITY. 



319 



which he shall awaken hereafter. This, you will 
observe, is a purely moral chastisement ; and apart 
altogether from the infliction of violence or pain on 
the sentient economy, is enough to overwhelm the 
spirit that is exercised thereby. Let him then that 
is unjust now be unjust still ; and in stepping from 
time to eternity, he bears in his own distempered 
bosom the materials of his coming vengeance along 
with him. The character itself will be the execu- 
tioner of its own condemnation ; and when, instead 
of each suffering apart, the unrighteous are con- 
gregated together — as in the parable of the tares, 
where, instead of each plant being severally 
destroyed, the order is given to bind them up in 
bundles and burn them — we may be well assured, 
that, where the turbulence and disorder of an 
unrighteous society are superadded to those suf- 
ferings which prey in secrecy and solitude within 
the heart of each individual member, a tenfold 
fiercer and more intolerable agony will ensue from 
it. The anarchy of a state, when the authority of 
its government is for a time suspended, forms but 
a feeble representation of that everlasting an- 
archy when the unrighteous of all ages are let 
loose to act and react with unmitigated violence on 
each other. In this conflict of assembled myriads ; 
this fierce and fell collision between the outrages of 
injustice on the one side, and the outcries of 
resentment on the other ; and though no pain 
were inflicted in this war of passions and of pur- 
poses, the passion and purpose of violence in one 
quarter calling forth the passion and the purpose 
of keenest vengeance back again — though no 



320 



HEAVEN A CHARACTER 



material or sentient agony were felt — though a war 
of disembodied spirits — yet in the wild tempest of 
emotions alone — the hatred, the fury, the burning 
recollection of injured rights, and the brooding 
thoughts of yet unfulfilled retaliation — in these, 
and these alone, do we behold the materials enough 
of a dire and dreadful pandemonium ; and apart 
from corporeal suffering altogether, may we behold, 
in the full and final developments of character 
alone, enough for imparting all its corrosion to the 
worm that dieth not, enough for sustaining in all 
its fierceness the fire that is not quenched. 

But there is another moral ingredient in the 
future sufferings of the wicked beside the one of 
which we have now spoken — suggested to us by 
the second clause of our text ; and from which we 
learn, that not only will the unjust man carry his 
falsehoods and his frauds along with him to the 
place of condemnation, but that also the voluptuary 
will carry his unsanctifiecl habits and unhallowed 
passions thitherward. " Let him that is filthy be 
filthy still/'' We would here take the opportunity 
of exposing, what we fear is a frequent delusion in 
society — who give their respect to the man o 
honour and integrity — and he does not. forfeit thai 
respect, though known at the same time to be v 
man of dissipation. Not that we think any one oj 
the virtues which enter into the composition of a 
perfect character can suffer without all the othei 
virtues suffering along with it. We believe that i\ 
conjunction between a habit of unlawful pleasure 
and the maintenance of a strict resolute exaltec 1 
equity and truth, is very seldom, we could almos; 



AND NOT A LOCALITY. 



321 



say, is never realized. The man of forbidden in- 
dulgence in the prosecution of his objects has a 
thousand degrading fears to encounter, and many 
concealments to practise — perhaps low and un- 
worthy artifices to which he must descend ; and 
how can either his honour or his humanity be said 
to survive, if at length, in his heedless and impetu- 
ous career, he shall trample on the dearest rights 
and the most sacred interests of families ? With 
us it has all the authority of a moral aphorism, 
that the sobrieties of human virtue can never be 
invaded without the equities of human virtue also 
being invaded. The moralities of human life are 
too closely linked and interwoven with each other, 
as that though one should be detached, the others 
might be left uninjured and entire ; and so no one 
can cast his purity away from him, without a vio- 
lence being done to the general moral structure 
and consistency of his whole character. But be 
this as it may, we have the authority of the text, 
and the oft reiterated affirmations of the New 
Testament, for saying of the voluptuary, that if 
the countenance of the world be not withdrawn 
from him, the gate of heaven is at least shut against 
him ; that nothing unclean or unholy can enter 
there ; and that carrying his uncrucified affec- 
tions into the place of condemnation, he will find 
them to be the ministers of wrath, the executioners 
of a still sorer vengeance. The loathing, the re- 
morse, the felt and conscious degradation, the 
dreariness of heart that follow in the train of guilty 
indulgence here — these form but the beginning of 
his sorrows, and are but the presages and the pre- 
7 x 



HEAVEN A CHARACTER 



cursors of that deeper wretchedness, which, by the 
unrepealed laws of moral nature, the same character 
will entail on its possessors in another state of 
existence. They are but the penalties of vice in 
embryo, and they may give at least the conception 
of what are these penalties in full. It will add — it 
will add inconceivably, to the darkness and disorder 
of that moral chaos in which the impenitent shall 
spend their eternity — when the uproar of the bac- 
chanalian and the licentious emotions is thus super- 
added to the selfish and malignant passions of our 
nature ; and when the frenzy of unsated desire, 
followed up by the languor and the compunction of 
its worthless indulgence, shall make up the sad 
history of many an unhappy spirit. We need not 
to dwell on the picture, though it brings out into 
bolder relief the all-important truth, that there is 
an inherent bitterness in sin ; that by the very 
constitution of our nature, moral evil is its own 
curse and its own worst punishment ; that the 
wicked on the other side of death, but reap what 
they sow on this side of it ; and that whether we 
look to the tortures of a distempered spirit, or to 
the countless ills of a distempered society, we may 
be very sure that to the character of its inmates — a 
character which they have fostered upon earth, and 
which now remains iixed on them through eternity 
— the main wretchedness of hell is owing. 

Before quitting this part of the subject, we have 
but one remark more to offer. It may be felt as if 
we had overstated the ]>owcr of mere character to 
beget a wretchedness at all approaching to the 
wretchedness of hell — seeing that the character is 



AND NOT A LOCALITY. 



323 



often realized in this world, without bringing along 
with it a distress or a discomfort w 7 hich is at all in- 
tolerable. Neither the unjust man of our text, nor 
the licentious man of our text, is seen to be so un- 
happy here, in virtue of the moral characteristics 
which respectively belong to them, as to justify the 
imagination that there these characteristics will be 
of power to effectuate such anguish and disorder of 
spirit as we have now been representing. But it is 
forgotten, first, that the world presents in its busi- 
ness, its amusements, and its various gratifications, 
a refuge from the mental agonies of reflection and 
remorse — and, secondly, that the governments of the 
world offer a restraint against ther outbreaking^ of 
violence which would keep up a perpetual anarchy 
in the species. Let us simply conceive of these two 
securities against our having even now a hell upon 
earth, that they are both taken down ; that there is 
no longer such a w T orld as ours, affording to each 
individual spirit innumerable diversions from the 
burden of its own thoughts ; and no longer such a 
human government as ours, affording to general 
society a powerful defence against the countless 
variety of ills that would otherwise rage and tumul- 
tuate within its borders — then, as sure as that a 
solitary prison is felt by every criminal to be the 
most dreadful of all punishments ; and as sure as 
that on the authority 'of law being suspended, the 
reign of terror would commence, and the unchained 
passions of humanity would go forth over the face 
of the land to raven and to destroy — so surely, out 
of moral elements and influences alone might an 
eternity of utter wretchedness and despair be en- 



324 



HEAVEN A CHARACTER 



tailed on the rebellious. And only let all the un- 
just and all the licentious of our text be formed into 
a community by themselves, and the Christianity 
which now acts as a purifying and preserving salt 
upon the earth be wholly removed from them ; and 
then it will be seen that the picture has not been 
overcharged, but that the wretchedness is intense 
and universal, just because the wickedness reigns 
uncontrolled, without mixture and without mitiga- 
tion. 

But we now exchange this appalling for a delight- 
ful contemplation. The next clause of our text 
suggests to us the moral character of heaven. We 
learn from it, that on the universal principle u as a 
tree falleth so it lies/' the righteous now will be 
righteous still. We no more dispute the material 
accompaniments of heaven, than we dispute the 
material accompaniments in the place of condem- 
nation. But still we must affirm of the happiness 
that reigns and holds unceasing jubilee there — that 
mainly and pre-eminently it is the happiness of 
virtue ; that the joy of the eternal state is not so 
much a sensible or a tasteful or even an intellectual 
as it is a moral and spiritual joy ; that it is a thing 
of mental infinitely more than it is a thing of cor- 
poreal gratification ; and to convince us how much 
the former has the power and predominance over 
the latter, we bid you reflect, that even in this 
world, with all the defect and disorder of its ma- 
terialism, the curse upon its ground inflicting the 
necessity of sore labour, and the angry tempest 
from its sky after destroying or sweeping off the 
fruits of it, the infirmity of their feeble and distem- 



AND NOT A LOCALITY. 



325 



pered frames, after the pining sickness and at times 
the sore agony — yet, in spite of these, we ask 
whether it would not hold nearly if not universally 
true, that if all men were righteous then all men 
would be happy ? Just imagine for a moment, that 
honour and integrity and benevolence were perfect 
and universal in the world; that each held the pro- 
perty and right and reputation of his neighbour to 
be dear to him as his own ; that the suspicions and 
the jealousies and the heart-burnings, whether of 
hostile violence or envious competition, were alto- 
gether banished from human society; that the emo- 
tions, at all times delightful, of goodwill on the one 
side, were ever and anon calling the emotions no 
less delightful of gratitude back again ; that truth 
and tenderness held their secure abode in every 
family ; and on stepping forth among the wider 
companionships of life, that each could confidently 
rejoice in every one he met with as a brother and a 
friend — we ask if on this simple change, a change 
you will observe in the morale of humanity, though 
winter should repeat its storms as heretofore, and 
every element of Nature were to abide unaltered — 
yet, in virtue of a process and a revolution altogether 
mental, would not our millennium have begun, and 
a heaven on earth be realized? Now let this contem- 
plation be borne aloft as it were to the upper sanc- 
tuary, where we are told there are the spirits of just 
men made perfect, or where those who were once 
the righteous on earth are righteous still. Let it be 
remembered, that nothing is admitted there which 
worketh wickedness or maketh a lie ; and that 
therefore, with every feculence of evil detached and 



326 



HEAVEN A CHARACTER 



dissevered from the mass, there is nought in heaven 
hut the pure the transparent element of goodness — 
its unbounded love, its tried and unalterable faithful- 
ness, its confiding sincerity. Think of the expres- 
sive designation given to it in the Bible, — the land of 
uprightness. Above all think, that, revealed in 
visible glory, the righteous God, who loveth right- 
eousness, there sitteth upon' His throne in the midst 
of a rejoicing family — Himself rejoicing over them, 
because formed in His own likeness, they love what 
He loves, they rejoice in what He rejoices. There 
may be palms of triumph ; there may be crowns of 
unfading lustre ; there may be pavements of eme- 
rald, and rivers of pleasure, and groves of surpassing 
loveliness, and palaces of delight, and high arches 
in heaven which ring with sweetest melody — but, 
mainly and essentially, it is a moral glory which is 
lighted up there ; it is virtue which blooms and is 
immortal there ; it is the goodness by which the 
spirits of the holy are regulated here, it is this which 
forms the beatitude of eternity. The righteous now, 
who, when they die and rise again, shall be right- 
eous still, have heaven already in their bosoms ; and 
when they enter within its portals, they carry the 
very being and substance of its blessedness along 
with them — the character which is itself the whole 
of heaveii ; s worth, the character which is the very 
essence of heaven's enjoyments. 

"Let him that is holy, be holy Still" The two 
clauses descriptive of the character in the place of 
celestial blessedness, are counterparts to the clauses 
descriptive of the character in the place of infernal 
wo. He that is righteous in the one stands con- 



AND NOT A LOCALITY. 



327 



trasted with liim that is unjust in the other. He 
that is holy in the one stands contrasted with him 
that is licentious in the other. But we would have 
you attend to the full extent and significance of the 
term iC holy/' It is not abstinence from the outward 
deeds of profligacy alone. It is not a mere recoil 
from impurity in action. It is a recoil from impurity 
in thought. It is that quick and sensitive delicacy 
to which even the very conception of evil is offensive 
■ — a virtue which has its residence within ; which 
takes guardianship of the heart, as of a citadel or 
unviolated sanctuary in which no wrong or worthless 
imagination is permitted to dwell. It is not purity 
of action that is all which we contend for. It is 
exalted purity of sentiment — the ethereal purity of 
the third heavens, which if once settled in the heart, 
brings the peace and the triumph and the unutter- 
able serenity of heaven along with it. In the main- 
tenance of this there is a curious elevation ; there is 
the complacency, we had almost said the pride, of a 
great moral victory over the infirmities of an earthly 
and accursed nature ; there is a health and harmony 
to the soul ; a beauty of holiness, which though it 
effloresces on the countenance and the manner and 
the outward path, is itself so thoroughly internal, as 
to make purity of heart the most distinctive evidence 
of a work of grace in time, the most distinct and 
decisive evidence of a character that is ripening and 
expanding for the glories of eternity. " Blessed are 
the pure in heart, for they shall see God/' With- 
out holiness no man shall see God." " Into the holy 
city nothing which defileth or worketh an abomina- 
tion shall enter." . These are distinct and decisive 



HEAVEN A CHARACTER 



passages, and point to that consecrated way through 
which alone the gate of heaven can be opened to 
us. On this subject, there is a remarkable harmony 
between the didactic sayings of various books in the 
New Testament, and the descriptive scenes which 
are laid before us in the book of Revelation. How- 
ever partial and imperfect the glimpses there afford- 
ed of heaven may be, one thing is palpable as day, 
that holiness is its very atmosphere. It is the only 
element which its inmates breathe, and which it is 
their supreme and ineffable delight to breathe in. 
They luxuriate therein as in their best-loved and 
most congenial element. Holiness is their oil of 
gladness — the elixir, if we may use the expression, 
the moral elixir of glorified spirits. And in their 
joyful hosannas, w T hether of "Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord 
God Almighty/' or of " Just and true are thy ways, 
thou King of Saints/' we may read, that as virtue 
in the Godhead is the theme of their adoration, so 
virtue in themselves is the very treasure they have 
laid up in heaven — the wealth as well as the orna- 
ment of their now celestial natures. 

We would once more advert to a prevalent delusion 
that obtains in society. We are aware of nothing 
more ruinous than the acquiescence of whole multi- 
tudes in a low standard of qualifications for Heaven. 
The distinct aim is to be righteous now, that after 
the death and the resurrection you may be righteous 
still — to be holy now, that you may be holy still. 
But hold it not enough that you are free from the 
dishonesties which would forfeit the mere respect and 
confidence of the world, or from the profligacies which 
even the world itself would hold to be disgraceful. 



AND NOT A LOCALITY. 



329 



There is a certain amount of morality which is in 
demand upon earth, but which is miserably short of 
the requisite preparation for Heaven — the holiness 
indispensable there, is a universal, an unspotted, and 
withal a mental and spiritual holiness. It is this 
which distinguishes the morality of a regenerated and 
aspiring saint from the morality of a respectable 
citizen, who still is but a citizen of the world, with 
his conversation not in heaven, with neither his 
heart nor his treasure there. The righteous of our 
text would recoil from the least act of unfaithfulness, 
from being unfaithful in the least as from being un- 
faithful in much. The holy of our text w r ould shrink 
in sensitive aversion and alarm from the first ap- 
proaches of evil, from the incipient contaminations 
of thought and fancy and feeling, as from the foul 
and final contaminations of the outward history. 
Both are diligent to be found of Christ without spot 
and blameless in the great day of account — glorify- 
ing the Lord with their soul and spirit as well as 
with their bodies — aspiring after those graces which, 
unseen by every earthly eye, belong to the hidden 
man of the heart, and in the sight of heaven are of 
great price — and so proceeding onward from strength 
to strength on this lofty path of obedience, till they 
appear perfect before God in Zion. 

We feel that we have not nearly exhausted the 
subject of our text by these brief and almost mis- 
cellaneous observations. The truth is, it is a great 
deal too unwieldy for any single address, and we shall 
therefore conclude with the notice of one specimen, 
that might be alleged for the importance of the view 
that we have just given, in purging theology from 



330 



HEAVEN A CHARACTER 



error. If the moral character then of these future 
states of existence were distinctly understood and 
consistently applied, it would serve directly and de- 
cisively to extinguish antinomianism. It would, in 
fact, reduce that heresy to a contradiction in terms. 
There is no sound and scriptural Christian who ever 
thinks of virtue as the price of heaven. It is some- 
thing a great deal higher, it is heaven itself — the 
very essence, as we have already said, of heaven's 
blessedness. It occupies therefore a much higher 
place than the secondary and the subordinate one 
ascribed to it even by many of the writers termed 
evangelical — who view it mainly as a token or an 
evidence that heaven will be ours. Instead of which 
it is the very substance of heaven — a sample on hand 
of the identical good which, in larger measure and 
purer quality, is afterwards awaiting us — an entrance 
on the path which leads to heaven ; or rather an 
actual lodgement of oursejves within that line of de- 
marcation which separates the heaven of the New 
Testament from the hell of the New Testament. For 
heaven is not so much a locality as a character ; and 
we, by a moral transition from the old to the new 
character, have in fact crossed the threshold, and are 
now rejoicing within the confines of God's spiritual 
family. By the doctrine of justification through 
faith, we understand that Christ purchased our right 
of admittance into heaven — or opened its door for 
us. Is there aught antinomian in this ? The 
obstacle, the legal obstacle, between us and a life of 
prosperous and never-ending virtue, is now broken 
down ; and is it upon that event that we are to re- 
linquish the patli which has just been opened to wel- 



AND NOT A LOCALITY. 



331 



come and invite our advancing footsteps ? The 
doctrine of justification by faith is not an ob- 
stacle to virtue — it is but an introduction to it. 
It is in truth the removal of an obstacle — the un- 
fastening of that drag which before held us in 
apathy and despair ; and restrained us from break- 
ing forth on that career of obedience in which, 
with the hope of glory before us ; we purify ourselves 
even as Christ is pure. The purpose of His death 
was not to supersede, but to stimulate our obedi- 
ence. " He gave himself for us to redeem us from 
all iniquity, and purify to himself a peculiar people 
zealous of good works." The object of His pro- 
mises is not to lull our indolence, but rouse us to 
activity. " Having received these promises, there- 
fore, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from 
all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holi- 
ness in the fear of Grod." 

We expatiate no further ; but shall be happy, if, 
as the fruit of these imperfect observations, you can 
be made to recognise how distinctly practical a 
business the work of Christianity is. It is simply to 
destroy one character, and to build up another in its 
room ; to resist the temptations which vitiate and 
debase, and make all the graces and moralities which 
enter into the composition of perfect virtue the ob- 
jects of our most strenuous cultivation. In the ex- 
pediting of this mighty transformation, on the com- 
pletion of which there hinges our eternity, we have 
need of believing prayer ; a thorough renunciation 
of all dependence on our own strength ; a thorough 
reliance on the proffered strength and aid of the 
upper sanctuary ; a deep sense of our infirmities, and 



3o2 HEAVEN A CHARACTER AND NOT A LOCALITY. 



constant application for that Spirit who has promised 
to help them — that, in the language of the Apostle, 
we may strive mightily, according to the grace which 
worketh in us mightily. 



THE REASONABLENESS OF FAITH. 



3o3 



DISCOURSE VII. 

ON THE REASONABLENESS OF FAITH. 



" But before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up 
unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed." — Galatianb 
iii. 23. 

" Shut up unto the faith." This is the expression 
which we fix upon as the subject of our present 
discourse ; and to let you more effectually into the 
meaning of it, it may be right to state, that in the 
preceding clause, " kept under the law," the term 
kept is, in the original Greek, derived from a word 
which signifies a sentinel. The mode of conception 
is altogether military. The law is made to act the 
part of a sentry, guarding every avenue but one — 
and that one leads those who are compelled to take 
it to the faith of the Gospel. They are shut up to 
this faith as their only alternative — like an enemy 
driven by the superior tactics of an opposing general 
to take up the only position in which they can main- 
tain themselves, or fly to the only town in which 
they can find a refuge or a security. This seems to 
have been a favourite style of argument with Paul, 
and the way in which he often carried on an intel- 
lectual warfare with the enemies of His Master's 
cause. It forms the basis of that masterly and 
decisive train of reasoning which we have in his 



334 



THE REASONABLENESS OF FAITH. 



Epistle to the Romans. By the operation of a skil- 
ful tactics, he (if we may be allowed the expression) 
manoeuvred them, and (shut them up to the faith of 
the Gospel It gave prodigious effect to his argu- 
ment when he reasoned with them, as he often does, 
upon their own principles, and turned them into in- 
struments of conviction against themselves. With 
the Jews he reasoned as a J ew. He made a full con- 
cession to them of the leading principles of Judaism, 
and this gave him possession of the vantage-ground 
upon which these principles stood. He made use 
of the Jewish law as a sentinel to shut them out of 
every other refuge, and to shut them up to the refuge 
laid before them in the Gospel. He led them to 
Christ by a schoolmaster which they could not refuse 
— and the lesson of this schoolmaster, though a very 
decisive, was a very short one. " Cursed be he that 
continueth not in all the words of this law to do 
them/' But in point of fact they had not done them. 
To them then belonged the curse of the violated 
law. The awful severity of its sanctions was upon 
them. They found the faith and the free offer of 
the Gospel to be the only avenue open to receive 
them. They were shut up unto this avenue ; and 
the law, by concluding them all to be under sin, left 
them no outlet but the free act of grace and of mercy 
laid before us in the New Testament. 

But this is not the only example of that peculiar 
way in which St. Paul has managed his discussions 
with the enemies of the faith. He carried the prin- 
ciple of being all things to all men into his very 
reasonings. He had Gentiles as well as Jews to 
contend with — and he often made some sentiment 



THE REASONABLENESS OF FAITH. 



335 



or conviction of their own, the starting point of his 
argument. In this same epistle to the Romans, he 
pleaded with the Gentiles the acknowledged law of 
nature and of conscience. In his speech to the men 
of Athens, he dated his argument from a point in 
their own superstition. In this way he drew converts 
both from the ranks of Judaism and the ranks of 
idolatry — and whether it was the school of Gamaliel 
in Jerusalem, or the school of poetry and philosophy 
in countries of refinement, that he had to contend 
with, his accomplished mind was never at a loss for 
principles by which he bore down the hostility of 
his adversaries, and shut them up unto the faith. 

But there is a fashion in philosophy as well as in 
other things. In the course of centuries, new 
schools are formed ; and the old, with all their doc- 
trines, and all their plausibilities, sink into oblivion. 
The restless appetite of the human mind for specu- 
lation must have novelties to feed upon — and after 
the countless fluctuations of two thousand years, 
the age in which we live has its own taste and its 
own style of sentiment to characterize it. If Paul, 
vested with a new apostolical commission, were to 
make his appearance amongst us, we should like to 
know how he would shape his argument to the reign- 
ing taste and philosophy of the times. We should 
like to confront him with the literati of the day, 
and hear him lift his intrepid voice in our halls and 
colleges. In his speech to the men of Athens, lie 
refers to certain of their own poets. We should like 
to hear his references to the poetry and the publi- 
cations of modern Europe — and while the science 
of this cultivated age stood to listen in all the pride 



336 



THE REASONABLENESS OF FAITH. 



of academic dignity, we should like to know the 
arguments of him who was determined to know 
nothing save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. 

But all this is little better than the indulgence 
of a dream. St. Paul has already fought the good 
fight, and his course is finished. The battles of 
the faith are now in other hands — and though the 
wisdom, and the eloquence, and the inspiration of 
Paul have departed from among us, yet he has left 
behind him the record of his principles. With this 
for our guide, w T e may attempt to do what he him- 
self calls upon us to do. We may attempt to be 
followers of him. We may imitate him in the in- 
trepid avowal of his principles — and we may try, 
however humbly and imperfectly, to imitate his style 
of defending them. We may accommodate our 
argument to the reigning principles of the day. We 
may be all things to all men — and out of the leading- 
varieties of taste and of sentiment which obtain in 
the present age, and in the present country, we 
may try if we can collect something which may be 
turned into an instrument of conviction for reclaim- 
ing men from their delusions, and shutting them up 
unto the faith. 

There is first, then, the school of Natural Reli- 
gion — a school founded on the competency of the 
human mind to know God by the exercise of its 
own faculties — to clothe Him in the attributes of its 
own demonstration — to serve Him by a worship 
and a law of its own discovery — and to assign to 
Him a mode of procedure in the administration of 
this vast universe, upon the strength and the plausi- 
bility of its own theories. We have not time at 



THE REASONABLENESS OF FAITH. 337 

present for exposing the rash and un philosophical 
audacity of all these presumptions. We lay hold 
of one of them ; and we maintain, that if steadily 
adhered to and consistently carried into its con- 
sequences, it would empty the school of natural 
religion 'of all its disciples — it would shut them up 
unto the faith, and impress one rapid and universal 
movement into the school of Christ. The princi- 
ple which we allude to makes a capital figure in 
their self-formed speculations ; and it is neither 
more nor less than the judicial government of God 
over moral and accountable creatures. They hold 
that there is a law. They hold the human race to 
be bound to obedience. They hold the authority of 
the law to be supported by sanctions ; and that the 
truth and justice and dignity of the supreme Being 
are involved in these sanctions being enforced and 
executed. One step more, and they are fairly shut 
up unto the faith. That law which they hold to be 
in full authority and operation over us, has been 
most unquestionably violated. We appeal, as Paul 
did before us, to the actual state of the human heart 
and of human performances. We ask them to open 
their eyes to the world around them — to respect, 
like true philosophers, the evidence of observation, 
and not to flinch from the decisive undeniable fact 
which this evidence lays before them. Men are 
under the law, and that law they have violated. 
" There is not a just man on earth, that sinneth 
not/' It is not to open, shameless, and abandoned 
profligacy that we are pointing your attention. 
We make our confident appeal to the purest and 
loveliest of the species. We rest our cause with 
7 y 



338 



THE REASONABLENESS OF FAITH. 



the most virtuous individual of our nature. We 
enter his heart, and from what passes there, we can 
gather enough, and more than enough, to overthrow 
this tottering and unsupported fabric. We take a 
survey of its desires, its wishes, its affections— 
and we put the question to the consciousness of its 
possessor, if all these move in obedient harmony 
even to the law of natural religion. The external 
conduct viewed separately and in itself, is, in the 
eye of every enlightened moralist, nothing. It is 
mere visible display. Virtue consists in the motive 
which lies behind it ; and the soul is the place of 
its essential residence. Bring the soul then into 
immediate comparison with the law of God. Think 
of the pure and spiritual service which it exacts 
from you. Amid all the busy and complicated 
movements of the inner man, is there no estrange- 
ment from God? Are there no tumultuous wander- 
ings from that purity, and goodness, and truth, 
which even philosophers ascribe to Him ? Is there 
no shortcoming from the holiness of His law, and 
the magnificence of His eternity ? Is there no 
slavish devotion to the paltry things of sense and 
of the world ? Is there no dreary interval of hours 
together, when God is unfelt and unthought of? Is 
there no one time when the mind delivers itself 
up to the guidance of its own feelings and its own 
vanities — when it moves at a distance from heaven 
— and whether in solitude or among acquaintances, 
carries along, without any reference to that Being 
whose arm is perpetually upon me ; who, at this 
moment, is at my right hand, and measures out to 
mo every hairbreadth of my existence — who upholds 



THE REASONABLENESS OF FAITH. 



339 



me through every point of that time which runs from 
the first cry of my infancy to that dark hour when 
the weight of my dying agonies is upon me — whose 
love and whose kindness are ever present, to give 
me every breath which I draw, and every comfort 
which I enjoy? We grant the disciples of natural 
religion the truth of their own principle, that we 
are under the moral government of the Almighty 
— and by the simple addition of one undeniable 
fact to their speculation, we shut them up unto the 
faith. The simple fact is, that we are rebels to 
that government ; and the punishment of these rebels 
is due to the vindication of its insulted authority. 
To say that God will perpetually interpose with 
an act of oblivion, would be vastly convenient for 
us — but what then becomes of that moral govern- 
ment which figures away in the demonstrations of 
moralists ? Does it turn out after all, to be no- 
thing more than an idle and unmeaning declamation, 
on which they love to expatiate, without anything 
like real attention or belief on the part of the 
thinking principle ? If they are not true to their 
own professed convictions, we can undertake to 
shut them up to nothing. This is slipping from 
under us — but it is by an actual desertion of their 
own principle. If you cannot get them to stand 
to the argument, the argument is discharged upon 
them in vain. If this be the result, we do not 
promise ourselves that all we can say shall have 
any weight upon their convictions — not, however, 
because they have gained a victory, but because 
they have betaken themselves to flight. At the 
very moment that we thought of shutting them up. 



340 



THE REASONABLENESS OF FAITH. 



and binding them in captivity to the obedience of 
the truth, they have turned about and got away 
from us — but how ? By an open renunciation of 
their own principle. Look at the great majority of 
infidel and demi-infidel authors, and they concur in 
representing man as an accountable subject, and 
God as a judge and a lawgiver. Examine then the 
account which this subject has to render — and you 
will see, in characters too glaring to be resisted, that 
with the purest and most perfect individual amongst 
us, it is a wretched account of guilt and deficiency. 
What make you of this ? Is the subject to rebel and 
disobey every hour, and the King, by a perpetual act 
of indulgence, to efface every character of truth and 
dignity from His government? Do this, and you 
depose the legislator from His throne. You reduce 
the sanctions of His law to a name and a mockery. 
You give the lie to your own speculation. You pull 
the fabric of His moral government to pieces — and 
you give a spectacle to angels which makes them 
weep compassion on your vanity — poor, pigmy, per- 
ishable man, prescribing a way to the Eternal, and 
bringing down the high economy of Heaven to the 
standard of his convenience and his wishes. This 
will never do. If there be any truth in the law of 
God over the creatures whom He has formed, and if 
that law w T e have trampled upon, we are amenable 
to its sentence. Ours is the dark and unsheltered 
state of condemnation — and if there be a single out- 
let or way of escaping, it cannot be such a way as 
will abolish the law and degrade the Lawgiver — but 
it must be such a way as will vindicate and exalt the 
Deity — as will pour a tide of splendour over the 



THE REASONABLENESS OF FAITH. 



341 



majesty of His high attributes — and as in the sublime 
language of the prophet, who saw it from afar, will 
magnify His law, and make it honourable. To this 
way we are fairly shut up. It is our only alter- 
native. It is offered to us in the Gospel of the New 
Testament. I am the way, says the Author of that 
Gospel, and by me, if any man enter in, he shall be 
saved. In the appointment of this Mediator — in 
His death, to make propitiation for the sins of the 
world — in His triumph over the powers of darkness 
— in the voice heard from the clouds of heaven, and 
issuing from the mouth of God himself, " This is my 
beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased" — in the re- 
sistless argument of the Apostle, who declares God 
to be just, and the justifier of him that believeth in 
Jesus — in the undoubted miracles which accom- 
panied the preaching of this illustrious personage, 
and His immediate followers — in the noble train of 
prophecy, of which He was the object and the termi- 
nation — in the choir of angels from heaven, who sung 
His entrance into the world — and in the sublime 
ascension from the grave, which carried Him away 
from it — in all this we see a warrant and a security 
given to the work of our redemption in the New 
Testament, before which philosophy and all her 
speculations vanish into nothing. Let us betake 
ourselves to this w r ay. Let us rejoice in being shut 
up unto it. It is passing, in fact, from death unto life 
— or, from our being under the law, which speaks 
tribulation and wrath to every soul of man that 
doeth evil, to being under the grace which speaks 
quietness and assurance for ever to all that repair to 
it. The Scripture hath concluded all to be under 



342 



THE REASONABLENESS OF FAITH. 



sin, that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might 
be given to them that believe. 

We now pass on from the school of natural religion 
to another school, possessing distinct features — and 
of which we conceive the most expressive designation 
to be, the school of Classical Morality. The lessons 
of this school are given to the public in the form of 
periodical essays, elaborate dissertations on the 
principles of virtue, eloquent and often highly in- 
teresting pictures of its loveliness and dignity, the 
charm that it imparts to domestic retirement, and 
its happy subservience to the peace, and order, and 
wellbeing of society. It differs from the former 
school in one leading particular. It does not carry 
in its speculations so distinct and positive a refer- 
ence to the Supreme Being. It is true, that our 
duties to Him are found to occupy a place in the 
catalogue of its virtues ; but then the principle on 
which they are made to rest, is not the will of God, 
or obedience to His law. They are rather viewed 
as a species of moral accomplishment — the effect of 
which is to exalt and embellish the individual. 
They form a component part of what they call vir- 
tue — but if virtue be looked upon in no other light 
than as the dress of the mind, we maintain, that in 
the act of admiring this dress, and of even attempt- 
ing to put it on, you may stand at as great a dis- 
tance from God, and He be as little in your thoughts, 
as in the tasteful choice of your apparel, for the 
dress and ornament of the body. The object of 
these writers is not to bring their readers under a 
sense of the dominion and authority of God. The 
main principle of their morality is not to please God, 



THE REASONABLENESS OF FAITH. 



343 



but to adorn man — to throw the splendour of virtue 
and accomplish ment around him — to bring him up 
to what they call the end and the dignity of his being 
— to raise him to the perfection of his nature — and 
to rear a spectacle for the admiration of men and of 
angels, whom they figure to look down with rapture 
from their high eminence on the perseverance of a 
mortal in the career of worth, and integrity, and 
honour. This is all very fine. It makes a good pic- 
ture — but what we insist upon is, that it is a fancy 
picture ; that without the limits of Christianity and 
its influence, you will not meet with a single family 
or a single individual to realize it — that the whole 
range of human experience furnishes no resemblance 
to it — and that it is as unlike to what we find among 
the men of the world, or in the familiar walks of so- 
ciety, as the garden of Eden is unlike the desolation 
of a pestilence. The representation is beautiful — 
but more flattering than it is fair. It is a gaudy de- 
ception, and stands at as great a distance from the 
truth of observation as it does from the truth of the 
New Testament. There is positively nothing like it 
in the whole round of human experience. It is the 
mere glitter of imagination. It may serve to throw 
a tinsel colouring over the pages of an ambitious elo- 
quence — but with business and reality for our objects, 
we may describe the tour of many thousand families, 
or take our station for years in the market-place, and 
in our attempts to realize the picture which has been 
laid before us, we will be sure to meet with nothing 
but vanity, fatigue, and disappointment. Now, the 
question we have to put to the disciples of this school 
is, are they really sincere in this admiration of vir- 



344 



THE REASONABLENESS OF FAITH. 



tue ? Is it a true process of sentiment within them ? 
We are willing to share in their admiration, and to 
ascend the highest summit of moral excellence along 
with them. We join issue with them on their own 
principle, and coupling it with the obvious and un- 
deniable fact of man's depravity, we shut them up 
unto the faith. Virtue is the idol which they profess 
to venerate — and this virtue, as it exists in their own 
conceptions, and figures in their own dissertations, 
they cannot find. In proportion to their regard for 
virtue must be their disappointment at missing her 
— and when we witness the ardour of their senti- 
ments, and survey the elegance of their high-wrought 
pictures, what must be the humiliation of these men, 
we think, when they look on the world around them, 
and contrast the purity of their own sketches with 
the vices and the degradation of the species. Grosser 
beings may be satisfied with the average morality of 
mankind — but if there be any truth in their high 
standard of perfection, or any sincerity in their aspi- 
rations after it, it is impossible that they can be 
satisfied. By one single step do we lead them from 
the high tone of academic sentiment to the sober 
humility of the Gospel. Give them their time to ex- 
patiate on virtue, and they cannot be too loud or 
eloquent in her praises. We have only a single sen- 
tence to add to their description : The picture is 
beautiful, but on the whole surface of the world we 
defy them to fasten upon one exemplification — and 
by every grace which they have thrown around 
their idol, and every addition they have made 
to her loveliness, they have only thrown mankind 
at a distance more helpless and more irrecover- 



THE REASONABLENESS OF FAITH. 



345 



able from their high standard of duty and of ex- 
cellence. 

The tasteful admirer of eloquent description and 
beautiful morality, turns with disgust from those 
mortifying pictures of man which abound in the 
New Testament. We only ask them to combine, 
with all this finery and eloquence, what has been 
esteemed as the best attribute of a philosopher — 
respect for the evidence of observation. We ask 
them to look at man as he is, and compare him with 
man as they would have him to be. If they find 
that he falls miserably short of their ideal standard 
of excellence, what is this but making a principle of 
their own the instrument of shutting them up unto 
the faith of the Gospel, or, at least, shutting them 
up unto one of the most peculiar of its doctrines, the 
depravity of our nature, or the dismal ravage which 
the power of sin has made upon the moral constitu- 
tion of the species ? The doctrine of the academic 
moralist, so far from reaching a wound to the doctrine 
of the Apostle, gives an additional energy to all his 
sentiments. " My mind approves the things which 
are more excellent, but how to perform that which 
is good, I find not/' " I delight in the law of God 
after the inward man." " But the good that I would 
I do not, and the evil that I would not, that I do/' 

But the faith of the Gospel does not stop here. It 
does not rest satisfied with shutting us up unto a be- 
lief of the fact of human depravity. That depravity 
it proposes to do away. It professes itself equal to the 
mighty achievement of rooting out the deeply-seated 
corruption of our nature — of making us new creatures 



346 



THE REASONABLENESS OF FAITH. 



in Christ Jesus — of destroying the old man and his 
deeds, and bringing every rebellious movement with- 
in us under the dominion of a new and a better 
principle. If sincere in your admiration of virtue, 
you are shut up unto the only expedient for the re- 
establishment of virtue in the world. That expedi- 
ent is the Spirit of God working in the heart of 
believers — quickening those who were dead in tres- 
passes and sins, and bringing into action the same 
mighty power which raised Jesus from the grave, 
for raising us who believe in Jesus to newness of 
life and of obedience. This is the process of sanctifi- 
cation laid before us in the New Testament. A 
wonderful process it undoubtedly is — but are we 
who walk in a world of mystery, who have had only 
a few little years to look about us, and are bewildered 
at every step amid the variety of God's works and 
of His counsels, are we to reject a process because 
it is wonderful ? Must no step, no operation of the 
mighty God be admitted, till it is brought under the 
dominion of our faculties ? — and shall we who strut 
our little hour in the humblest of His mansions, pre- 
scribe a law to Him whose arm is abroad upon all 
worlds, and whose eye can take in at a single glance 
the unmeasurable fields of creation and providence ? 
Be it as wonderful as it may — enough for us that it 
is made sure by the distinct and authentic testimony 
of heaven — and if, from the mouth of Jesus, who is 
heaven's messenger, we are told, that " unless a man 
be born of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the king- 
dom/' it is our part submissively to acquiesce, and 
humbly to pray for it Whatever repugnance others 



THE REASONABLENESS OF FAITH. 34 7 

may feel to this part of the revealed counsels of God, 
those who look to a sublime standard of moral ex- 
cellence, and sigh for the establishment of its autho- 
rity in the world, ought to rejoice in it. It is the only 
remaining expedient for giving effect and reality to 
their own declamations, and they are fairly shut up 
unto it. Long have they tried to repair the disorders 
of a ruined world. Many an expedient has been 
fallen upon. Temples have been reared to science 
and to virtue — and from the lofty academic chair 
the wisdom of this world has lifted its voice amid a 
crowd of listening admirers. For thousands of years 
the unaided powers and principles of humanity 
have done their uttermost — and tell us, ye advocates 
for the dignity of the species, the amount of their 
operation. If you refuse to answer, we shall answer 
for you — and do not hesitate to say, that mighty 
in promise and wretched in accomplishment, you 
have positively done nothing — that all the wisdom 
of the schools, and all its vapouring demonstrations, 
have not had the least perceptible weight when 
brought to bear upon the mass of human character 
and human performance — that the corruption of 
the inner man has not yielded at all to your rea- 
soning, and remains as unsubdued and as obstinate 
a principle as ever — that the power of depravity in 
the soul of man is beyond you — and that setting 
aside the real operation of Christianity in the hearts 
of individuals, and the surface-dressing which the 
hand of legislation has thrown over the face of so- 
ciety, the human soul, if seen in its nakedness, would 
still be seen in all its original deformity — as strong 



348 



THE REASONABLENESS OF FAITH. 



in selfishness, as lawless in propensity, as devoted to 
sense and to time, as estranged from God, as un- 
mindful of the obedience, and as indifferent to the 
reward and the inheritance of His children. 

The machine has gone into disorder — and there 
is not a single power within the compass of the 
machinery itself that is able to repair it. You must 
do as you do in other cases — you must have recourse 
to some external application. The inefficacy of 
every tried expedient shuts you up unto the only 
remaining one. Every human principle has been 
brought to bear upon it in vain ; and we are shut 
up unto the necessity of some other principle that is 
beyond humanity and above it. The Spirit of God 
is that mighty principle. That Spirit which moved 
on the face of the waters, and made light, and peace, 
and beauty to emerge out of the wild war of Nature 
and her elements, is the revealed agent of Heaven 
for repairing the disorders of sin and restoring the 
moral creation of God to health and to loveliness. 
It will create us anew unto good works. It will make 
us again after that image in which we were origi- 
nally formed. It will sanctify us by the faith that is 
in Jesus. And by that mighty power whereby it is 
able to subdue all things unto itself, it will obtain 
the victory over that spirit which now worketh in 
the children of disobedience. The resurrection of 
Jesus from the dead is the first fruit of its operation, 
and to him who believes, it is the satisfying pledge 
of its future triumphs. That body, which, left to 
itself, would have mouldered into fragments, is now 
in all the bloom of immortality at the right hand 



THE REASONABLENESS OF FAITH. 



349 



of the everlasting throne. We have tried the opera- 
tion of a thousand principles in vain. Let us repair 
to this, so great in promise, and so mighty in per- 
formance. It has already achieved its wonders. It 
has wrought those miracles of faith and fortitude 
which, in the first ages of Christianity, threw a 
gleam of triumph over the horrors of martyrdom. 
It has given us displays of the great and the noble 
which are without example in history — and from 
the first moment of its operation in the world, it has 
been working in those unseen retirements of the 
cottage and the family, where the eye of the his- 
torian never penetrates. The admirers of virtue are 
fairly shut up unto the faith — for faith is the only 
avenue that leads to it. " To your faith add virtue, " 
says the Apostle — and that you may be able to 
make the addition, the promise of the Spirit is given 
to them that believe. 

We should now pass on to another school, the 
school of fine feeling and poetical sentiment. It 
differs from the former in this — that while the one, 
in its dissertations on virtue, carries us up to the 
principles of duty, the other paints and admires it 
as a tasteful exhibition of what is fair and lovely in 
human character. The one makes virtue its idol 
because of its rectitude ; the other makes virtue its 
idol because of its beauty — and the process of 
reasoning by which they are shut up unto the faith, 
is the same in both. Look at the actual state of 
the world, and we find that both the rectitude and 
the beauty are awanting. If you admire the one, 
and love the other, you are shut up unto the only 



350 



THE REASONABLENESS OF FAITH. 



expedient that is able to restore them — and that ex- 
pedient is sanctioned by the truth of heaven, and 
has all the power of omnipotence employed in giving 
effect to the operation — the Spirit of Grod subduing 
all things unto itself — putting the law in our hearts, 
and writing it in our minds — and by bringing the 
soul of man under the influence of " whatsoever 
things are pure, or honest, or lovely, or of good re- 
port/' creating a finer spectacle, and rearing a fairer 
and more unfading flower, than ever grew in the 
gardens of poetry. 

The processes are so entirely similar, that we 
would not have made it the distinct object of your 
attention, had it not been for the sake of an argu- 
ment in behalf of the faith, which may be addressed 
with great advantage to the literary and cultivated 
orders of society. There are few people of literary 
cultivation who have not read a novel. In this 
fictitious composition, there are often one or two 
perfect characters that figure in the history, and de- 
light the imagination of the reader — and you are at 
last landed in some fairy scene of happiness and 
virtue, which it is quite charming to contemplate, 
and which you would like to aspire after — perhaps 
some interesting family in the bosom of which love, 
and innocence, and tranquillity, have fixed them- 
selves — where the dark and angry passions never 
enter — where suspicion is unknown, and every eye 
meets another in the full glance of cordiality and 
affection — where charity reigns triumphant, and 
smiles beneficence and joy upon the humble cottages 
which surround it. Now this is very soothing and 



